A 700-year-old West African farming practice could be an answer to climate change

[Judi Lynn]

A 700-year-old West African farming practice could be an answer to climate change

Written by

Lily Kuo

June 22, 2016 Quartz africa

For the last 700 years women in Ghana and Liberia have been using a valuable farming technique that modern-day agronomists have only recently figured out. It transforms depleted soil into “enduringly fertile” farmland.

A team of anthropologists and scientists studied almost 200 sites in the two West African countries and found that women added kitchen waste and charcoal to nutrient-poor tropical soil. The resulting rich black soil, which the researchers call “African dark earths,” could help countries adapt to the effects of climate change as well as improve agriculture not just in Africa but in resource-poor and food-insecure regions around the world.

“This simple, effective farming practice could be an answer to major global challenges such as developing ‘climate smart’ agricultural systems which can feed growing populations and adapt to climate change,” said James Fairhead, an anthropologist from the University of Sussex and co-author of the study.

Food availability has improved almost everywhere since the 1990s, but progress has been slow in sub-Saharan Africa, Central America and southern Asia. In 2015, 795 million people (pdf) around the world were still undernourished—in Africa 23% of the population (pdf. p.3) was still considered hungry, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

More:
http://qz.com/713512/a-700-year-old-west-african-farming-practice-could-be-an-answer-to-climate-change/

[msongs]

1. fancy name for composting nt

[appal_jack]

2. The charcoal takes it beyond just composting.

In Central & South America, it has been referred to as "Terra Preta" dark earths. The traditional agricultural practice must have independently evolved on each of the two continents.

-app

[eppur_se_muova]

3. If you cook over wood fires, there's plenty of charcoal available from the hearth ...

if you burn coal, what's left is hideously toxic.

Not certain that burning wood on an industrial scale would be sustainable. Better to plow under a certain percentage of stover, and burn the rest for fuel or process it for feedstocks.

[OKIsItJustMe]

7. Right. They’re not talking about burning it at an industrial scale.

http://www.sussex.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressrelease/id/35929

…

They discovered that the ancient West African method of adding charcoal and kitchen waste to highly weathered, nutrient poor, tropical soils can transform the land into enduringly fertile, carbon-rich black soils that the researchers dub ‘African Dark Earths’.

…

[NickB79]

4. YouTube has had homemade biochar/terra preta videos for a decade now

One of these days I'm gonna get around to doing this on a large scale for my 1.5 acre property.

[OKIsItJustMe]

8. Of course, the Africans had it 700 years before YouTube was invented

So, you know… credit where credit is due…

[GreydeeThos]

5. Allan Savory talks about farming practices to reverse climate change.

https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s_deserts_and_reverse_climate_change?language=en

“Desertification is a fancy word for land that is turning to desert,” begins Allan Savory in this quietly powerful talk. And it's happening to about two-thirds of the world’s grasslands, accelerating climate change and causing traditional grazing societies to descend into social chaos. Savory has devoted his life to stopping it. He now believes — and his work so far shows — that a surprising factor can protect grasslands and even reclaim degraded land that was once desert.

[OKIsItJustMe]

6. More here…

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1127102565

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/fee.1226/abstract

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Indigenous African soil enrichment as a climate-smart sustainable agriculture alternative[/font]
[font size=4]Abstract[/font]
[font size=3]We describe for the first time a current indigenous soil management system in West Africa, in which targeted waste deposition transforms highly weathered, nutrient- and carbon-poor tropical soils into enduringly fertile, carbon-rich black soils, hereafter “African Dark Earths” (AfDE). In comparisons between AfDE and adjacent soils (AS), AfDE store 200–300% more organic carbon and contain 2–26 times greater pyrogenic carbon (PyC). PyC persists much longer in soil as compared with other types of organic carbon, making it important for long-term carbon storage and soil fertility. In contrast with the nutrient-poor and strongly acidic (pH 4.3–5.3) AS, AfDE exhibit slightly acidic (pH 5.6–6.4) conditions ideal for plant growth, 1.4–3.6 times greater cation exchange capacity, and 1.3–2.2 and 5–270 times more plant-available nitrogen and phosphorus, respectively. Anthropological investigations reveal that AfDE make a disproportionately large contribution (24%) to total farm household income despite its limited spatial extent. Radiocarbon (¹⁴C) aging of PyC indicates the recent development of these soils (115–692 years before present). AfDE provide a model for improving the fertility of highly degraded soils in an environmentally and socially appropriate way, in resource-poor and food-insecure regions of the world. The method is also “climate-smart”, as these soils sequester carbon and enhance the climate-change mitigation potential of carbon-poor tropical soils.[/font][/font]

[4dsc]

9. Try permaculture

that is all.