Food Chain Radio Show #1013

Michael Olson, Author & Urban Farming Agriculturalist

Terra Preta & Gold in the Garbage

This Poll is closed

Which is the most important benefit of recycling?

Preserves the environment

Reduces pollution

Conserves energy

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40%

20%

40%

Guests: Wes Bolsen, Public Affairs & Business Development Director, Cool Planet and Ivy Young, Santa Cruz Compost

The key to humanity’s survival may well come from the Terra Preta of the Amazon.

Michael Olson Food Chain Radio – Terra Preta and Gold in the Garbage. Photo by Michael Olson: Shipibo Amazon Guide

Tera Preta, or “dark earth,” is sterile jungle soil made fertile with the addition of biochar, or charcoal, by the ancients who lived in the Amazon basin before the first European explorers visited in the early 1500’s, but who disappeared thereafter.

Many did not believe the first explorers accounts of the civilizations they saw in Amazon, as the jungle soil was simply too thin to support any population larger than hunter and gatherers.  But later, much later, anthropologists flying over the Amazon saw city-like patterns laid out in the jungle below.  Investigating, they discovered large piles of ceramics midst the grids, and rich, dark soil they called “terra preta.”

Terra preta, the anthropologists assert, was soil manufactured by the ancients adding charcoal to the soil.  The properties of terra preta are amazing, as centuries later, the soils still maintain enough fertility to support a civilization.

The fundamental technology of terra preta, which is simply the sequestering of carbon, is now being fine tuned by the digital minds of modern technology into “enhanced biochar.”  And so we ask…

Can the art of composting get us to the gold in garbage?

Tune in here, for the syndicated Food Chain Radio Show #1013 May 16, 2015 Saturday 9AM Pacific