UK researchers aim to prove farming technique as climate cure

A modern take on the age-old farming technique of ploughing charred plants into the soil could help tackle climate change and even food security, according to researchers in Scotland.

Their study is looking at biochar, a charcoal-like substance produced from heating farm or food waste, which when ploughed into the soil can store the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide and may help retain nutrients and water.

The process of making biochar also produces low-carbon energy, including heat and an energy-rich gas which can be burned to produce electricity.

“The farmer can use his agricultural residues to produce clean energy. He is off-setting the fossil fuel usage that he would ordinarily have,” said Jason Cook, a PhD student at Edinburgh University.

“By applying the char to the land he would (also) mitigate the need for oil-derived fertilisers,” and lock away the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.

“We don’t understand everything – but it does have huge potential,” he said. Some scientists have questioned the benefit of biochar for soil fertility. Cook is in the second year of biochar field trials at Stonelaws Farm in picturesque East Lothian. It is farmed by Colin Hunter, who remembers a similar technique being used when he was a child.