Biochar Production

Terra preta (dark earth) soils were built up by pre-Columbian peoples in the Amazon basin from 500 to 2500 BP using a form of biochar produced through the controlled smoldering of household biowaste by covering it with straw and dirt. This process mimicked the fertile conditions found after forest fires and volcanoes, where a portion of the carbon-based plant life doesn't burn to ash because it is smothered under brush and debris. Harnessing this natural regenerating technology allowed them to feed large populations and grow a civilization. Fields managed for centuries were left to proliferate after a 90% population crash caused by the invasion of the Europeans. Recent evidence suggest that the so-called “lungs of the planet,” the lush Amazon basin, is not the pristine wilderness we mythologize it to be, but a garden: an anthropogenic artifact of a civilization with a more sophisticated relationship to waste than our own.