Demonstrating Farmer Interest in the Distributed Production of Biochar: Warm Heart Foundation in Mae Chaem
Michael Shafer
ABSTRACT
Research and behavior change efforts have largely passed over the role of developing world small farmers in the fight against climate change, smog in the megacities, and “haze” or smoke pollution. Either their role has been missed or underestimated, or the problem of enlisting them in stopping burning overestimated. Research by the Warm Heart Foundation, however, demonstrates that by burning just 25 percent of their crop wastes annually, small farmers add as much eCO2 to the atmosphere as the United Kingdom [1]. It also shows that given small financial incentives, small farmers will convert crop waste to biochar, preventing the emission of eCO2 , smog precursors, and particulates, and sequestering millions of tons of CO2 annually.
This research has huge implications for slowing climate change, improving public health and reducing poverty among the world’s poorest: very small, rural farmers.
December 2016 to March 2017, the Warm Heart Foundation field-tested farmers’ willingness to make biochar from corn crop waste in Mae Chaem District, Chiang Mai Province, North Thailand.The project demonstrates that with a small financial incentive and a market farmers will produce biochar in volume; without both, they will not. The results show that using homemade technology farmers can easily produce enough biochar for their own needs from a tiny portion of available biomass. If provided a small financial incentive to convert additional biomass into biochar and a market for it, they will do so enthusiastically; without them, the biomass will burn, contributing to climate change, degrading public health and wasting a valuable agricultural resource
