The Agroforester

Biochar and Charcoal Briquettes Made from Forest Trash

Reforestation, its benefits and responsibilities are for everyone.  This article is one in a series that is written for the average person so that he or she can easily learn a role.  An informed public is more likely to become active.  Deforestation must be overcome through reforestation and that is something that can be accomplished more by average people wanting to participate than by scientists who merely examine, it seems.  Let's make it happen.  Remember:  Reforestation is a social event first and without those at the grassroots the newly planted trees will not survive beyond their first three years.  Help the locals to help the forest and we all will benefit.

Why Briquettes?

The briquette process that our Foundation utilizes works very well even though it is a very small operation.  It shows that the cutting of trees to make charcoal can be replaced by the making of charcoal from forest trash.  Furthermore, the process actually produces Biochar which can then be used for beneficial purposes within the forest, farm and garden.

The cart in this photo has wheels, the charcoal sleds do not.  To transport the charcoal is hard work.

Our purpose was to stop regular charcoal making from trees, which is laborious and costly to the charcoal maker.  

1. First they have to negotiate with the tree owner who will get a share of the charcoal. 
2. Second they have to cut down the tree and cut it into uniform pieces. 
3. Next they must stack it in the proper way.
4. Then they must cover it with soil and mud. 
5. • If it is the dry season making the mud is a lot of added work. 
6. Once the preparation is completed they have to light the wood and monitor it while it smolders for around a week. 
7. • All of this process is equal to time and money, it is a business that they engage in to make a meager living.  
8. After the charcoal making is complete they must bag it into cavans (sacks), about 50 to 60 kilos each. 
9. Then they have to rent a carabao (water buffalo) with a sled,
10. They load the sled.
11. Then they transport out of the forest to the water's edge and unload. 
12. Next they have to hire a banka (boat).
13. They load the cavans of charcoal onto the banka and ride to the nearest market several kilometers away to the mainland. 
14. Once at the market they are at the mercy of the buyer and they sell at a low price. 
15. The proceeds pay for production, the tree, the land transportation, the water transportation and to themselves.
16. Now they buy supplies at the market and return home with almost no money, ready to cut another tree.

Erosion is controlled by the leaves on the forest floor so it is important that we not clean the forest floor of leaves when looking for forest trash from which to make charcoal briquettes.  It takes years for the forest floor to be adequately covered by fallen leaves, so be careful.  Only use trash other than the leaves.  The spreading of Biochar, from the residue of the briquette making process, on the forest floor should speed up the forest growth, the recapturing of airborne carbon and enhance the forest overall.  This process however, remains in debate amongst the scientists.  The Foundation monitors the debate so it can move rapidly when there is consensus about these issues, but for now all of the significant indicators are very positive for the use of Biochar.

From Charcoal to Briquettes

To get the charcoal makers to switch to the Foundation's  briquette process was not so difficult. 

• We designed the 55 gallon drum as the slow high heat furnace and placed a cone shape top on it. 
• We explained to them that the two to three weeks that they spend making charcoal can be shortened and they would not have to buy any more trees. 
• We continued the explanation that they would gather forest trash from the forest floor and segregate it into piles. 
• • The palm frawns in one pile, the coconut shells in one,
  • the husks in another,
  • the whole nuts in even another,
  • tree limbs and branches in another. 
  • Then they would buy from us for 50 pesos ($1.00) they furnace.  By selling, even at a modest amount, the pride of ownership is present. 
  • We taught them how to load the furnace and to carbonize the forest trash.  
  • They now bring to us the cavans of carbonized matter and we purchase it. 
  • Their only cost is the one-time purchase of the furnace, the transportation of the cavan to the Foundation where the briquette press is located. 
  • That's it and it is easier and quicker, they net the same amount that they did when making charcoal and are able to complete the process in about 1/3 the time, with a fraction of the work.

1. The Foundation then takes the carbonized material and mixes it with a fixer such as casava and then emulsifies it with water. 
2. The last process is the pressing and our machine makes twelve at a time, which is plenty. 
3. • It takes two laborers to press and handle the briquettes which must be placed out to dry before being boxed. 
   • They require boxing in order to protect them from being crushed. 

The University of the Philippines at Los Banos studied the BTU output of the briquettes made from all kinds of forest trash.  They found that the poorest quality of forest trash produced briquettes with greater BTU output than the highest quality of charcoal.

The local municipal government agreed to pass and ordinance prohibiting the making of charcoal if the briquettes are sufficient in supply to replace the charcoal.
 

In a future article the author will produce a series of photos depicting the complete process of making charcoal briquettes. For now, this is one of two presses that are in operation.

The Machine

Our briquette machine was fabricated locally in Luzon and we shipped it to our site several hundred miles south and onto our island for a total cost of $622 equivalent.  There are sophisticated presses that can produce commercial quantities for around $10,000.00 equivalent.

The local municipal government has promised to require use of briquettes in lieu of charcoal at such time that the supply is sufficient to replace charcoal.

This photo depicts slash and burn which is different than just the cutting of one tree at a time in order to make charcoal, however, this is representative of what the cutting of merely 100 trees can do to a standing forest.  On the other hand charcoal makers cut one tree at a time in most of the 42,000+ barangays or on the average of about 1 tree per day per barangay each year, which if clumped together would represent an area of more than 170,000 times the slashed area in this photo.

Remember:  In the Philippines 17 million trees are cut yearly to make charcoal, the leading cooking fuel.  Briquette making from forest trash can replace the tree cutting.

A Little Help will Go a Long Ways

We will continue our small efforts, but with your help we will expand them. You may contribute at the top right margin of this page.

Sincerely, Joseph J. Reynolds, President, IVAFMS Foundation, Inc.

ERADICATE POVERTY! IS IT POSSIBLE? THE UN SAYS IT IS, SO DOES THE ADB, BUT HOW?

 

Without discretionary income the locals wait for infrastructural improvements, seemingly forever.

This article is very short because the cause is so profound and the answer is so simple.

·            The absence of food, shelter and clothing were the earliest measure of poverty. 

·          Possession of them meant the family was not poor.

·          The ability to produce any one of them in greater abundance than the family needed was wealth building.

    In the beginning man achieved by concentrating on food production, but not mass production.  He simply met his family’s daily needs.

Poverty was on its way to becoming an institution nearly 10,000 years ago.  How can we possibly change it now?  Why did it develop, mankind is older than that?  Was poverty in the would-be dictionary then?  Mankind’s refrigerator and kitchen cabinet were the living forest or other aspects of Mother Nature’s kitchen, but that kitchen has long been closed or abandoned, ignored or destroyed in favor of something more  modern and practical to our new ways and demands of living.  We all know that whatever system makes it to market first is most likely the one that we are going to use and eventually institutionalize.  

·      Why do we use alternating current instead of direct current that is cheaper, safer and simpler to use?

·      Why do we use fossil fuel instead of biofuel for our internal combustion engines when the first successful fuel used was biofuel?

·      Why do we use the most popular computer operating system, which we know is not the most efficient?

·      Why do we continue using the existing agricultural system, when there are better systems that even predated but we abandoned in favor of perpetuating poverty as a tool, sort of replacing the warlords?

Poverty is an Institution.

The list can go on and on but the core question is about poverty and can it be eradicated?   How did it become so widespread and accepted that it has become an institution.  There are families that have been in poverty for generations, it is a system that people are born into and die there without ever having escaped it; they cannot pull themselves away from its holding powers.

The social countermeasures to poverty consist of so many that in order to list them would be easiest by merely referring the reader to the blue pages of the municipal telephone book. 

Entire college curriculum is devoted to the subject.  Outside of national defense budgets in most First World countries the largest budgets are devoted to the question of either poverty prevention or support to the poor or the reduction of poverty through various social approaches, many disguised as if doing some other public good.  Unfortunately, few of the programs actually do more than perpetuate poverty.

The Agricultural System is the “Key” that needs to be changed.

When the warlords built the agricultural system and put it into action it was done on the backs of the cheapest labor possible.  They had slaves.  Food and water was the main expense.  The land was available and all other needs could be supplied merely by directing the energy of the slave force.  The production of food was meant to feed the army and cost was the concern. 

Keep the cost down. 

This system was never designed for the farmer to be anything other than a slave.  No farmer was intended to create wealth; that would be punishable.  This is the system that made it to the market first and although it has been modified throughout history it remains so true today that any reader of this would be hard put to find farmers in this world who, without government subsidies, do not remain poor.  Before you run off to prove to the contrary please note that about half the world's population are farmers of one type or another.  So to be significant in your findings please find at least 60 million exceptions out of 3 billion or about 2%.

Agroforestry is the New Key.

New and innovative practices must utilize everyday technologies that are modular, carbon neutral, locally based and conservatories of renewable consumables. 

“Producers”, fruit, nut, sap, fiber, medicinal, herbal and biomass must come from the forest, that we rebuild, rather than from plantations. 

Mother Nature’s formula is bio-diversity and in rehabilitating barren lands to forests this process must be the recipe and the local farmers the beneficiaries.  Their massive numbers at the grassroots level is the formula for volume by “lots of little bits” rather than a “few’ (plantations) ‘with a lot” each. 

Bio-diversity, probiotics and forest-based processing are not only carbon neutral, it is a tremendous sustainable carbon sink that produces wealthy agroforesters in a major departure from tradition.  To do this successfully requires consultation to bring the reader to a new mind-set.

The Foundation is working with government and non-government alike to bring about this new wave of thinking.  This entire Blog is devoted to agroforestry and it is suggested that you open the articles listed in the left margin and see how change can be made and poverty can actually be eradicated.  If you do not find the answers then send your comment and question and the Foundation will provide the answer.

The Foundation has systems:

·      to get the displaced urban poor to return to the provinces and enter agroforestry,

·      to create wealth at the grassroots,

·      to train and educate the next generation to be the “Commerce Matrix”,

·      to work with the landed gentry and the poor to benefit both,

·      to create urban vertical farming,

·      to create organic production as the standard,

·      to use probiotics for living soil,

·      to produce, process and use at the local level using new discretionary funds, and

·      TO ERADICATE POVERTY OF AGROFORESTERS AND THOSE WITHIN THE COMMERCE MATRIX.

OUR GOAL IS TO REFOREST 7% OF THE PHILIPPINES.  THE FIRST 1% IS PROGRAMATIC AND THE OTHER 6% IS THROUGH VOLUNTARY REPLICATION. 

PLEASE SEND YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS THROUGH ANY OF THE DONATION BUTTONS ON THE UPPER RIGHT COLUMN. 

Slash and Burn, Indonesia and the Third World, can Biochar help?

A discussion leader of a significant Biochar discussion group very recently asked me to educate more about Biochar regarding the Slash and Burn issue in Indonesia.  My thankful response to Trevor Richards follows.

Sierra Madre, Aurora Province, 2009.  Part of the remaining 2.7% of the originial forest that remains nationwide.

 

I'm heading back to the forest in April for several months and will be working the Biochar during that period and will report the results through articles.  Regarding the persistent slash and burn problem, not only in Indonesia but around the tropical world, my observations in the Philippines seem to be common to the others.  I've consulted to "expert" consultants of the major development bank here and found that the proximate cause is generally overlooked in favor of more complicated indirect causes, such as alternative crop selection. 

The Proximate Cause

Simply put, farming is hard work.  The farmer prefers that his crops be close to his home and he does not want to climb a mountain.  He does not want the extra work that it takes to clear a new patch of land.  Why then does he go to so much effort to slash a forest that is farther from his home and higher up the mountain?  Why does he then burn the forest that he just slashed rather than utilizing it productively and sustainably?  He has to eat and make a living.   The crops that he grows require fertile ground.

The Solution

Biochar can be a solution to the problem because it is the need for fertile land into which the farmer must plant his crop that he chooses this laborious route to growing his next crop.  As we know the forest yields fertile land for no more than three years before it plays out.  Fertilizers, whether commercial or organic are either not available or are too costly to obtain from long distances and therefore the least costly approach that the farmer sees is to clear more land.  The logging bands prevent the sale of the logs and the wasteful and harmful burning of them is their solution, i.e. Singapore is covered with smoke and the GHG emissions continue, not only in Indonesia but throughout the Third World.

Teach the making of Biochar from forest trash to replace

the making of charcoal from cut  trees.

The Methodology

The use of Biochar should be a system that involves the farmer.  He must know about the forest, which most farmers have little knowledge about.  He must be taught about organic trash, how much to harvest, how much to leave on the forest floor.  He must be taught how to convert it properly into Biochar and how to spread it onto his fields. 

One series of lessons will produce such positive results that the teachers will teach more teachers and the slashing and burning will stop simply because it is less work and more productive to continue farming the same piece of stationary property that is no longer moving farther up the mountain and farther from home; and now his crops remain closer to the market.  Less work for higher productivity is what the farmer will see.  

After this is accomplished we can teach the use of organic and probiotic methodology in combination with the Biochar to make living soil for sustainability and the diminished need of traditional fertilizers.  After that we can teach Agroforestry for sustainability, biodiversity and locally based economic development which eradicates poverty.  Biochar is the best and least costly beginning point.

The Cost

The cost is minimal for the return.  For less than one thousand dollars for equipment plus the cost of training more than 100 hectares can be saved and the GHG emissions stopped.

Please help by sending your three (3) dollars at the top right of this page.  Tell your friends and ask them to contribute as well.  Thank you, Joseph J. Reynolds, President, Ilin Value Added Forestry Management Services Foundation, Inc.