Biochar Cabon Sequestration

NPI seeks to help reduce global warming by the addition of biochar to farmlands and rangelands, globally, for massive carbon sequestration.

Biochar used as a soil additive/ amendment, increases soil fertility long-term, improves crop yields, holds more soil moisture, engages in massive carbon sequestration, provides food security, adds to farm profits, and acts to boost community development. U. N. Food & Ag Organization (FAO) reports that not less than 440,000 smallholder farmers urgently need biochar to provide an economical & efficient means of sustaining soil fertility to achieve good crop yields. By working to achieve this goal, carbon sequestration may be achieved on a large-scale, worldwide.

N. B. For details on biochar, please see U. S. Biochar Initiative's Biochar Learning Center website.

Biochar serves farmers, smallholder farmers, and ranchers who can no longer afford to buy and use commercial fertilizers at inflated prices (over 300 percent for some) to sustain good crop yields. U. N. Food & Ag Organization (FAO) reports that not less than 820 million people, of a global population of eight billion, are now living on the brink-of-starvation. The documented cause is lower crop yields due to less fertilizer use for the above said dramatic increase in fertilizer prices.  Thus, not enough food crops are produced to meet global demands. Biochar will help these farmers greatly increase crop yields long-term, efficiently and at a low cost, thereby making more foods available to help end the stated hunger crises. 

NPI's staff is working, directly and by distance education means, with farmers worldwide, on improvements in agricultural technologies to include biochar. Our biochar team members are: 1) David Nuttle, BS Ag & extensive biochar research; 2) Odette Milla, Ph.D. Ag & global biochar expert; and 3) Darren McAvoy, Ph.D. biochar extension specialist, Utah State Univ. a very extensive biochar soil fertility/ food security demonstration was just completed with 25 poor smallholder farmers in El Salvador. These farmers all had small farms where the biochar benefits herein stated were achieved on their farms using coffee-bean hulls to make the biochar used. These farmers made inputs & suggestions on how biochar is used. NPI's current biochar project is to make biochar in large quantities from insect-killed timer and demonstrate same on large farms in Colorado & Utah. A biochar farm implement, created by NPI, will be used to quickly and efficiently add biochar to large farm fields & ranch pastures.  The U. S. Biochar Initiative, Intl. Biochar Institute, Utah State Univ., and National Agriculture College in El Salvador are all providing technical support to NPI's biochar projects.

Biochar, and its advantages as herein stated have been proven by NPI and over 400 biochar farm research projects in over seven nations. Now is the time to scale this technology to improve global food security and engage in massive carbon sequestration on a global scale. Moreover, prolonged hunger/ food insecurity problems are now causing armed conflicts in a number of areas; e. g. Darfur in Sudan with over 400,000 killed and two million displaced due to food and potable water shortages. N. B. Biochar helps conserve water by holding more moisture in soils and reducing the amount of crop irrigation water needed.

Biochar is now available by the bag in a few "box-stores," and mostly purchased by gardeners. Farmers and ranchers have not been purchasing or using biochar since there has been no efficient means of adding biochar to farmlands/ pastures on a large scale. NPI has solved this problem by the invention of a biochar farm implement w/ wire-trenching tongs, biochar hoppers to supply biochar, & scrappers to move soil displaced over the biochar deposited in these trenches. This implement will incorporate biochar to soils at root-zone depth at a rate of 8 to 10 percent biochar added to soil volume present. NPI is now seeking a farm implement manufacturing firm to commercially produce this biochar farm implement.  

Biochar was first developed, by tribes in the Amazon Basis, several hundred years ago. In the process of clearing forest to make new farm fields, required because heavy tropical rains depleted plant nutrients from existing fields, they created trenches to stack and burn timber & brush cut. This biomass was burned with the top 1/3rd creating a fire-cap preventing most all oxygen from reaching the lower 2/3rds of biomass. This lower biomass thus was forced to undergo pyrolysis eliminating bio-oils & biogas and leaving hundreds of small cavities in the biomass creating biochar. Tribes placed this on farm fields where existing soil microbes occupied cavities as homes and paid "rent" by producing all essential plant nutrients, so these fields remained fertile.

Today, the benefits of biomass are finally recognized as a means to provide the much-needed benefits herein previously stated. NPI is providing a wat for farmers to make and use biochar on a large scale efficiently adding biochar to large areas of farmlands using NPI's innovative biochar farm implement. I addition, NPI create a way to inoculate biochar w/ cultivated soil microbes plus a proprietary formula that typically doubles usual crop yields. The biochar market is expected to grow dramatically because of this fact and due to biochar's ability to undertake massive carbon sequestration.

At a time when negative energy policy has increased the price of some commercial fertilizers by more than 300 percent. This fact has forced many farmers and smallholder farmers to seek more economical solutions to help sustain soil fertility on their farms to prevent lower crop yields and reduced farm income. Given this fact, and because biochar sustains soil fertility more than a decade w/ a single application, many farmers will quickly accept NPI's subject biochar solution. NPI will help accomplish this result by direct and distance education means. Publication of very positive 3rd-party biochar research results will speed use of biochar by farmers, worldwide. 

NPI's project impact goals are to greatly increase food security, worldwide, while also using biochar to engage massive carbon sequestration to improve the "health" of our planet!!  Results of progress shall be measured in the degrees of success, in all nations, as regards the accomplishment of the above goals.  Inoculated biochar and clay particles are used by NPI to make fertile crop rows on desert lands to grow assorted crops there (1/3rd of all land on earth). Innovative development of desert water resources along with subsurface drip-irrigation are also needed for such crop production. Progress in this regard will depend on how many acres of desert cropland NPI is able to provide using its biochar technology. N. B. NPI is planning & preparing for a biochar counterdesertification crop production demonstration in Kenya.

As previously outlined, NPI's core technologies are large-scale production of biomass, from varied forms of biomass such as insect-killed timber, inoculation of same by special means to double typical crop yields, and the addition of same to farmlands/ rangelands using NPI's innovative biochar farm implement.

Three from NPI's staff, plus two contractors for the main project. For making biochar from insect-killed timber NPI coordinates with the U. S. Forest Service and employs three mor contractors for harvest, transport, & pyrolysis of said biomass. Several farmers doing biochar demonstrations on their farms are also part of NPI's biochar team.

NPI has been working on biochar technology development/ improvement for over a decade. 

With global operations, NPI's team is always diverse. When project or personnel barriers are encountered, NPI works to remove these soonest. Open lines of communication are constant, and all parties are included. Equity in all things is always a goal.

NPI's business model is based on product (biochar) production & delivery plus product implementation, worldwide.

NPI's sales of product (biochar) and product utilization/ implementation contracts with farmers will make NPI financially sustainable. Current evidence of success is when farmers compare the value of biochar costs and benefits with commercial fertilizers, these farmers instantly have become an NPI biochar customer.  Biochar sells!!!