BY DR. JOSE PALU-AY DACUDAO
AS DISCUSSED in previous articles, the traditional practice of burning the remains of sugar cane (or other woody material) after a harvest, and then plowing the resulting char into the soil sequesters carbon away from the atmosphere.
Traditionally, it is known NOT burning will result in crop failure.
(Never mind the Philippine’s clean-air act, which needs to be amended, or just abolished and cleaned out, leaving anti-pollution laws to local government units that know the local conditions better. Never mind the alarmist and silly memes going around that this will create irrevocable pollution and harm people.
If something is burning or charring, make sure to just stay away so you don’t inhale the volatile poisonous combustion products. These products are mostly small compounds derived from the common elements in organic matter, including, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, hydrogen cyanide, nitrous oxides, sulfur dioxide, and so on.
But the poisonous ones have short half-lives in the atmosphere, and so disappear pretty quickly. The Pinatubo volcanic explosion released more massive quantities of these, yet in just a year the air above the Philippines had pretty much cleared.)
It happens that burning the harvested field results in charring of the woodier parts of the mature sugar cane. This produces charcoal.
In case of the sugar cane fields of Negros, ever wondered why some of them have been growing cane for more than a hundred years, and yet remain well-conditioned?
Once plowed into the ground, char (carbon) results in a carbon-rich soil, the same as the very fertile and famous terra preta of the Amazon. Soil rich in elemental carbon retains water, minerals, and other nutrients far better than soils that are not, and prevent acidification.
It has turned out that the slash and burn system, which by legend is detrimental to the ecosystem, that native Amazonians have employed has actually resulted in one of the richest soil in the world, wherein plants grow faster and denser.
Moreover, according to the formula describing charring, which is also a form of carbonization:
C6H12O6 (organic compound) → 6 C + 6 H2O
The carbon organic material becomes fixed as elemental carbon for a very long time. Elemental carbon is quite difficult to oxidize and does not biologically decompose. Recall that living organisms derive their energy form the oxidation of hydrogen, and not carbon. There is no need to further biodegrade elemental carbon, as a living organism gets nothing out of it.
Carbon though makes up the basic structure of their bodies’ compounds, and so most metabolic processes in the biosphere tend to concentrate carbon in the organisms’ bodies. Once charred into charcoal, the resulting carbon tends to stay around permanently, especially if buried underground.
The same is true for peat, the precursor substance for coal. Organic matter if buried under anoxic conditions under pressure tend to have their oxygen removed, resulting in the formation of carbon-rich peat. (To be continued)/PN
