It’s All About The Biochar
It’s been a busy few years at Sweet Farm, both above and below the ground. While much of the progress in our fields can be seen with your eyes, significant work has also been going into continually improving and building soil health. Here on the farm, we use regenerative agriculture practices including limited and no tillage techniques, crop rotation, cover cropping, mulching, and the addition of biochar into the soil.
A lot of people ask — what is Biochar? Biochar is created by burning organic matter (known as biomass) at high temperatures with little to no oxygen. This process is called pyrolysis. This resulting charred product (i.e. biochar) is a highly porous material that provides many ecological benefits when created properly and correctly incorporated into soil on a farm.
Using biochar as a part of building soil health helps increase soil carbon, improve moisture retention, increase habitat for beneficial microbes, along with a ton of other ecologically beneficial effects. Biochar helps build soil fertility and eliminate the need for animal based fertilizers. At Sweet Farm, we use biochar that comes from a new technique that burns human waste, from a wastewater treatment facility, in a process that safely breaks down pharmaceuticals and other contaminants. Normally, this waste would end up in a landfill -- but through working with a startup called Bioforcetech, we are able to close the human waste cycle, create healthier soil, reduce the demand for animal products and make the world a more sustainable place. The process also produces clean power at the same time!
Over the last three years, Sweet Farm and Bioforcetech have been conducting the first field trials of biochars from their new technology, helping to showcase biochar’s benefits in our veganically grown flowers and produce. Together, our work has helped increase the number of wastewater treatment plants using their technology, and created more sources for high quality biochars for local farmers.
Typical organic fruit and vegetable production relies on significant quantities of animal byproducts like manure, fish meal, bone meal, and blood meal. These animal byproducts are a direct result of factory farming of animals, and its use in organic farming only increases the amount of money these farms can make from their exploitative and cruel practices. By replacing these byproducts with sustainable supplements like biochars, we can reduce the demand for animal byproducts, while creating a healthier food system for people and the planet.
Sweet Farm’s Innovation Program supports startups like Bioforcetech by assisting with their first field trials, helping them with accessing investor funding, and supporting the use of their products with customers around the world. If you are a startup interested in working with us, you can email us!
