Soil replenishment secrets from ancient conservationists

As someone said, if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. The last place to look for solutions is probably right where the problem lies.

PhysOrg reports on how the early inhabitants of the Amazon basin boosted crop productivity by enriching their fields with biochar.

Here's the whole story:

Ancient soil replenishment technique helps in battle against global warming from PhysOrg.com

Former inhabitants of the Amazon Basin enriched their fields with charred organic materials - biochar - and transformed one of the earth's most infertile soils into one of the most productive. These early conservationists disappeared 500 years ago, but centuries later, their soil is still rich in organic matter and nutrients. Now, scientists, environmental groups and policymakers forging the next world climate agreement see biochar not only as an important tool for replenishing soils, but as a powerful tool for combating global warming.

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Technorati Tags: soil replenishment, soil conservation, amazon basin, biochar, global warming

How green is tea?

Tea has been on my mind. Mostly because I have spent the last few weeks drinking it guiltily.

Coffee, I am told, is better for our forests than tea. Two NCF researchers I met in Valparai confirm this.

Tea cultivation essentially involves the clearing of large tracts of forest, leaving them bare and devoid of shade trees. Coffee, on the other hand, allows for shade trees and secondary cultivation. Tea offers nothing to grazing animals. It offers some shelter to birds, but nothing they won't find elsewhere. Coffee berries may be eaten by monkeys, civets, some herbivores and even elephants. Since tea picking takes place year round, tea habitats are constantly disturbed. Coffee suffers only seasonal disturbance.

Two weeks ago, I was shocked to see how tea gardens in the High Wavy Hills and Valparai verged upon some of the last stands of inviolate evergreen forest in the Western Ghats. This increases greatly the possibility of human-animal conflict and leaves the environment vulnerable to invasion by exotic plant and animal species.

These are not exactly great times for tea the product, so managements are opening up tea gardens to tourists who, having fooled themselves sufficiently that acres and acres of countryside bejewelled with tea bushes are an authentic imitation of paradise, will pay to stay in a guest house and be pampered with a whiff of colonial nostalgia. Along with a little rum and water in the evenings to wash down any chance feelings of guilt that may have pricked their consciences.

I wonder what my friend God, who until recently lived on a tea estate and worked in a coffee plantation, would have to say about this quandary of the cuppa.

On a lighter note, for those like me who still love their tea, this much has to be said: there are green ways of making it.

Like our guide Devidutt did up at 7500 feet in the Himalaya.

From HIMALAYA-GARHWAL-APR-MAY2007

From HIMALAYA-GARHWAL-APR-MAY2007