Terra Preta soil was impregnable against soil erosion and the vegetation that spawned from it flourished in both size and abundance. Plants grew bigger and stronger. Farmers found their crops yielding an abundant harvest year over year without having to recondition the soil.
The secret of Terra Preta lies in the biocharcoal mix. One of biocharcoal's unique properties is that it is extremely porous, yet extremely strong in molecular structure. The great porosity allows minerals and nutrients essential for plant growth to be retained inside the biocharcoal. This provides time for the plant roots to extract the nutrients. Without biocharcoal, these nutrients would normally wash away through the soil and into the bedrock after a rainfall.
And, because of biocharcoal's inherently strong physical structure, mixing it with regular soil increases the soil's strength, especially against winds and water erosion.
Now, zoom back to present times, as biocharcoal once again is catching on in modern-day farms. Today, several farms are employing a combination of biocharcoal and natural fertilizers to enhance their soils. Here is a link to a youtube video that shows the comparison study of 1) adding regular fertilizer to a corn field sample and 2) adding regular fertilizer + biocharcoal to a similar corn field sample. And the results are nothing short of AWESOME.
The findings show that the biocharcoal + fertilzer mix yielded corn plants approximately 3 times the size of corn plants from a regular fertilizer mix.
Perhaps one day, the big boys of agriculture fertilizers such as Potash and Agrium can see the tremendous potential that biocharcoal offers.
