Authors: Kari Tiilikkala, Prof. emeritus, MTT Agrifood Research Finland, Priit Tammeorg, Adjunct Prof., Dept of Agricultural Sciences, University of Helsinki
There is an urgent need to develop climate smart agriculture and to change food and farming systems more sustainable globally. Use of biochars has become one of the technologies, which offers many possibilities to improve soil fertility and to create long-term carbon sink. Addition of biochars to soils can simultaneously improve soil health and contribute to climate change mitigation. Most soil-added biochars are a long-term storage of carbon with stability of hundreds to thousands of years. History of the use of biochars as soil amendment is millennia long [8] but their use as a part of modern agriculture and carbon farming is relatively short with earliest experiments started in 2006.
Very often application of a biochar in agriculture is based on limited practical knowledge about long term impacts of biochar in soil ecosystems. Functions of a biochar amendment depend very much on the soil type and productivity of a field. Thus, commercial scale biochar field trials are urgently needed to get more information about long-term impacts of biochar on soil health and productivity.
A follow-up article will be available in a handbook on climate-friendly agricultural practices.