TLDR

1. When buying products from companies (like Bayer, BASF, and Corteva) like seed and fertilizer they all need to be from the same company

• Idea: You need to buy Bayer seed and fertilizer for it to work.

• Next step: Talk to big companies supplying products to make sure there are no issues for biochar (good validation for farmers to trust biochar)

2. Main reasons for low yield year: Soil is too dry or too wet

• Hypothesis: Biochar solves both problems because biochar can hold water 5 to 7 times its weight.

• When there is a substantial amount of biochar being too wet won’t be an issue

• When it is dry since biochar holds water until the plants need it, it would be helpful for going through the dry season

• Next Step: Talk to biochar research to validate that this is true.

3. Incentives for Farmers

• For farmers to adopt a new product over their fields they need to see an increase of 4 to 5 bushels per acre. For context Iowa in the last year had an average yield of 201 bushels per acre. Which is about a 2.5% increase in yield.

• Limitations of information: Talked to 1 person who with farmers who isn’t a farmer.

• Next Step: Talk to farmers to validate the threshold of yield increase for them to adopt biochar.

• The sooner the benefit the better, 50% of the land is rented. Farmers are short-term focused because they need to pay bills.

4. How To Apply Biochar

• Farmers need a playbook to know how to apply it. This reduces friction of adoption and more importantly increases the probability of biochar working.

• Assumption: There are specific ways to apply biochar to make it effective

• Next Step: Talk to researcher to know the best way to apply biochar (how often, how much, what is the max amount of biochar per acre, how spread out across the acre it should be).

5. Why is biochar not being used it

• No one has produced it at a significant volume — now early commercialization stage (good timing for me)

• Next step: Look into the process of pyrolysis, what machinery you need, the efficiency of biomass to biochar, talk to companies producing biochar to understand how they are approaching + get rough estimate of the cost + how much can be produced.

6. How long does biochar last for?

• Generally 1,000 to 10,000. Examples below

• Terra Preta, meaning “Black Earth” in Portuguese — at least 7000 years — Rain Forest -(20°C to 25°C) Environment.

• Western Vancouver Temperate Rainforest — 9,556 years — Temperate Forest (10 degrees) Environment

• Australia Savannahs — 1,300 to 2,600 years — Savannah environment (in between forest and dessert)

• German Haplic Luvisol Soils — 2,000 years — Temperate Forest

Info From Conversations

Iowa Corn Association (ICA)

• The Iowa Corn Promotion Board (ICPB) — works to develop and defend markets, fund research, and provide education about corn and corn products.

• The Iowa Corn Growers Association (ICGA) is a membership (where farmers pay to be in) organization lobbying on agricultural issues on behalf of its 8,000 members.

Email all the main people in the Iowa Corn Growers Association so I can get access to their network of farmers to have a forum so I can ask a lot of them.

Planting Practices

• They put fertilizer on the soil every fall (September or so) and planting season starts in April with the latest being June if there is bad weather

• When buying products (ex. seeds, fertilizer) from companies you need to use specific products usually you have to buy all products from the same company because all of the R&D tests were done with only the companies’ products. Otherwise, if you mix and match with all companies your yield won’t be good.

• Biggest companies: Bayer (bought Monsanto), BASF, Corveta. They have a lot of money they have to make better seeds.

• Iowa has good soil because of “The Storm of the Century” in 1993. Where a bunch of their crops destroyed millions of Iowa crop acres. Part of crops burned (which acted as biomass) and made biochar. Now in Iowa their organic matter in soil is 3% to 4% which is good. If you compare to Minnesota which is directly under Iowa and they don’t nearly have as much yield due to limited organic matter in the soil.

Reasons for Low Yield

• Too wet — biochar solves this by being able to hold water 5 to 7 times its weight (a hypothesis that needs to be validated).

• Too dry — biochar holds enough water for when the soil has adequate water so it can provide water in dry times (a hypothesis that needs to be validated)

• Extreme Wind or large solid hail (very uncommon), but badly affected plant yield in 2020. In 2020, the yield was about an average of 178 bushels per acre, and this year it is 201 bushels per acre which is 1,288 pounds (1 bushel = 56 pounds) = extra $7,490 per acre. Iowa has 35.7 million acres = $267.4M extra revenue.

Incentives of farmers

• Does this product work/does it increase yield? Companies are constantly making claims that they will help your soil, but is it true? Farmers aren’t sure. If they tried out your product they would try it out on a small field and test it vs what they currently use to see efficacy.

• A clear advantage is 4 to 5 bushels per acre (since this is outside rounding error).

• Adoption curves — like any product, early adopters set the tone and they spread the word — they are influential.

• The sooner the benefit the better, 50% of the land is rented. Short-term focused because they need to pay bills.

• How much does it cost? Do I get more yield? Convincing them that it is not going to be detrimental — They are looking at the cost to benefit. The assumption is that it needs to be significantly better than the current fertilizer.

How and when do you apply it?

• Farmers need a playbook to know how to apply it. This reduces the friction of adoption and more importantly increases the probability of biochar working since I’m assuming there are specific ways it is meant to be applied to the soil.

• Since Phosphorus has very slow movement you need to till (flip 6 to 10 inches of soil so biochar can be at the bottom. Fertilizer has a specific machine that inserts it in soil and biochar can be implemented the same way too.

Why is biochar not happening yet?

• No one is producing biochar at any significant volume yet.

• No one has priced biochar yet so this is still an early stage of commercial application.

• Potential wins for biochar

• Since nitrogen is extracted from oil operations and the cost of extracting oil is increasing because they need to dig deeper to Reacher the oil = more energy + more time = higher cost. This goes down to the company selling fertilizer and then goes to the consumer increasing price.

Advantage of Biochar

• Biochar has a strong advantage over fertilizers. They can not be washed away by rain. It said if 24 hours of rain has more than half an inch of rain directly in the same location it can start dissolving or washing away (which is not helpful for plants. Rain also washes away nutrients in the soil.

• According to some biochars can hold up to 7 times their weight in water, others can hardly hold one time their weight. Note: the process is highly dependent on the type of feedstock + how pyrolysis is done → Question type of feedback + pyrolysis process is required for high water weight.

• Implication: The more water you can store, the more nutrients you can store. Making rain days of over half an inch is not an issue. In Iowa, there are about 15 to 25 days of half an inch rainfall in 24 hour

How Long Biochar Can Stay In Soil (with Examples)

Biochar is very stable lasting for 1,000 to 10,000 years

• How long does biochar last in the soil for (With Case Studies) based on this video — Dr. David Shearer University of Utah — under different conditions.

• Terra Preta, meaning “Black Earth” in Portuguese — at least 7000 years — Rain Forest (20°C to 25°C) Environment.

• Image of it (good visual comparison for presentations)

• Western Vancouver Temperate Rainforest — 9,556 years — Temperate Forest (10 degrees) Environment

• Australia Savannahs — 1,300 to 2,600 years — Savannah environment (in between forest and dessert)

• German Haplic Luvisol Soils — 2,000 years — Temperate Forest