In their search to make the increasingly productive olive trees, these researchers have had an idea: to throw coal

The jungle floor is between reddish or yellowish; He is sterile and ungrateful, blinding and distemper. It is plagued with mineral oxides or empty of calcareous materials. It is and has always been a bad ground.

Therefore, when in the middle of the Amazon, the settlers met the ‘Terra Petra‘They couldn’t believe it. It was a black, tremendously fertile land, incredibly resistant to the decomposition of organic matter. For decades, nobody knew where he had been able to leave.

A dark enigma for a bright future. Some said that the Andes volcanoes could have come, others suggested that they should be a product of sedimentation of the tertiary lakes. But, When analyzing they realized that they were truffled with ceramic remains, fish swords, jewelry and human objects.

The miracle of the ‘Terra Preta’ was the miracle of huge agricultural communities mixing land, vegetable coal, organic material of all kinds and favoring the growth of an own ecosystem within them.

Charcoal? Indeed. That same face The researchers stayed. The jungle peoples often use a burning system to create fertile soils. The problem is that they lose fertility quickly. With the ‘Terra Preta’ it does not happen and the secret is in that coal. What in jargon is known as ‘biochar’.

And that is really working? That is what The European Soil O-Live project has been askedif the olive trees could treat with a mixture of biochar and compost.

The result is what brings us here: what Yes it works. According to researchers at the University of Jaén, coal treatment increases oil production between 7 and 24%. That is, between 0.4 and 1.7 kilos of oil per olive tree.

It is true that it is a preliminary investigation, but without a very promising place.

And what do we want it for? That is, without this type of “treatments” Spain is already the place of the world where more oil occurs and not for: grows 15% per year. The problem is that the machine cannot stop because demand It grows even more.

Where will this race take us, that voracity? That is one of the great questions of the century.

Image | KEVIN MARTIN JOSE | Wander Fleur

Image | In full climate crisis, a United States startup proposes an millenary technology of the Amazon: Capture CO2 on the ground