Saving The Planet While Saving The Farm
How soil carbonization could save the planet while it saves the family farm
Scott Bidstrup, Arenal de Tilaran, Guanacaste, Costa Rica, 2004
For a long time, soil geologists and archaeologists faced a mystery.
The mystery was a nagging one, but not an urgent problem that impelled soil scientists to travel to the Amazon jungles to solve. But it was an intriguing problem which was finally solved by an archaeological survey - a survey which involved soil geology.
For many years, it had been known that among the extremely weathered and infertile soils of the Amazon basin, some of the least-fertile soils on the planet, there are large, widespread patches of highly fertile soil. Soil that is not just fertile, but extremely fertile - so fertile and so valuable that for many years it has actually been mined and exported. What was the difference? The only visible difference was that the fertile soil is black, pitch-black, and grew just about anything with ease, and the infertile soils, just a few meters away, are a pale yellow color, and are so infertile that almost nothing except native weeds can grow in them.