Farmers do the cha-cha over local soil solution

A Victorian company is making a centuries-old carbon soil recipe in agricultural-size quantities for growers across the globe.

Farmers and horticulturalists have been turning green waste into biochar, a fine-grained charcoal, for years to enrich soil health and store carbon.

Now a Victorian company has scaled up to agricultural-sized production with a plant at Lysterfield, at the foot of the Dandenong Ranges, to sell its 80 per cent carbon product by the bagful through the Green Man Char brand.

Biochar is not a fertiliser but a soil amendment, and after application effectively creates a space within the soil for biological nutrient reactions to take place, assisting with water and carbon retention.

Earth Systems biochar manager Ryan O’Connor said both residual and waste biomass, like forest and crop residues, is converted into biochar in a process called pyrolysis.

Earth Systems biochar manager Ryan O'Connor and Mac Forbes Wines assistant vineyard manager Dave Singleton at the new Mac Forbes vineyards, Yarra Junction. Picture: Yuri Kouzmin

The product can be used in all soils and as a livestock feed.

“If you have a pile of mulch it will slowly rot down and disappear in the atmosphere, but biochar is locked into the soil and doing great things for your plants,” he said.

“Residues go through what is effectively a massive oven with extreme heat of 500 to 600 degrees and very low oxygen, there is no burning and no smoke. It just cooks the biomass and gets rid of everything except for carbon.

“You’ll get better yield and the size of the fruit will be bigger as well. It sounds like bull*** but it is true.”

Mac Forbes Wines assistant vineyard manager David Singleton said “anyone who is growing plants should be using it”.

The premium brand company has been adopting regenerative farming techniques for several years and decided to make its own biochar in combustion fire pits to help new plantings on its Yarra Junction property before hearing about Green Man.

Earth Systems biochar machine, Lysterfield, Victoria.

“The reason people haven’t been using it more widely is because they couldn’t get it in agricultural quantities,” he said.

“It is about improving the quality of the grape and growing fruit in a really healthy way and working better with the natural environment.”

Biochar is also seen as a drawdown rather than an offset carbon credit and is currently trading internationally at A$200 per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent.

The company envisages building a host of pyrolysis plants around the country, while it already has global customers and recently sold machines to the Hong Kong Jockey Club.

“The future of biochar, as a non-fossil fuel carbon, in Australia, may be embryonic, but is certainly exciting,” Mr O’Connor said.