In a recent National Public Radio interview, Michael Pollan talks about how he was approached by a Democratic party staffer about his New York Times article, Farmer in Chief. The article is an open letter to the next president concerning U.S. agriculture policy. The staffer wanted Pollan to summarize the article into a page or two to get it into the hands of Barack Obama. Pollan declined, saying that if he could have said everything that needed to be said in two pages, he wouldn't have written 8000 words.

Despite the snub, it looks like the article created enough of a buzz that it made it into Obama's stack of pre-election reading material...

In an interview with Joe Klein, Obama refers to the article, explaining how Pollan's ideas fit into the concept of a new energy economy.

Obama's analysis of Pollan's message:

   " There is no better potential driver that pervades all aspects of our economy than a new energy economy. I was just reading an article in the New York Times by Michael Pollen about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it's creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs because they're contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in healthcare costs. That's just one sector of the economy. You think about the same thing is true on transportation. The same thing is true on how we construct our buildings. The same is true across the board."

This article prompted me to send M. Pollan another update on biochar research and genteel pleading to include Biochar technology in his next agriculture policy directive to the president;

"Dear Michael,

I can just see the bread crumb trail I believe/hope  you  are laying out in the NPR interview. Biochar will be the 8001th word, the grand finally of solutions?
The path your work has taken me on in human / plant interactions, the pleasurable and problematic seem solved by diversity and land management practices. We know  that means food web/SOM management. The arguments for sustainability you put forward, if embraced, will lead to the biochar bread.

President Obama has already done so much to  de-mystified, de-politicize  and de-stigmatize the word black, I feel that "A Black Revolution in Agriculture" (as a recent  article titled a biochar story), would be quite consistent with this achievement.

I spoke today with Dr. Johannes Lehmann  607 254 1236 , he is more than willing to layout all the new work to you.

Last year there were no biochar studies at the American Chemical Society (ACS) conference, this year several dozen.

Biochar at ACS;
Most all this work corroborates char dynamics we have seen so far in biochar soils. The soil GHG emissions work showing  increased CO2 , also speculates that this CO2 has to get through the hungry plants above before becoming a GHG.
The SOM, MYC & Microbes,  N2O (soil structure), CH4 , nutrient holding , Nitrogen shock, humic compound conditioning, absorbing of herbicides all pretty much what we expected to hear.

Biochar Studies at ACS Huston meeting;

578-I:  http://a-c-s.confex.com/crops/2008am/webprogram/Session42 ...

579-II http://a-c-s.confex.com/crops/2008am/webprogram/Session44 ...

665 - III.  http://a-c-s.confex.com/crops/2008am/webprogram/Session44 ...

666-IV   http://a-c-s.confex.com/crops/2008am/webprogram/Session44 ...

Total CO2 Equivalence:
Even before the total CO2 equivalent credits are validated they should be on the product label. Once a commercial bagged soil amendment product, every suburban household can do it,
The label can tell them of their contribution, a 40# bag = 150# CO2 = 160 bags / year to cover my personal CO2  emissions.( 20,000 #/yr , 1/2 average)
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/ind_calculator ...

Full carbon credit validation should easily follow the path that has gained  carbon credits for no-till practices.

But that is just the Carbon!
I have yet to find a total CO2 equivalent number taking consideration against some average field N2O & CH4 emissions.  The New Zealand work shows 10X reductions.
 If biochar also proves to be effective at reducing nutrient run-off from agricultural soils, then there will also be a reduction in downstream N2O emissions .

This ACS study implicates soil structure / N2O connection;
http://a-c-s.confex.com/crops/2008am/webprogram/Paper4195 ...

Counting on the 8001th word
Erich
540 289 9750

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Michael Pollan
 to me

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Thanks-- look forward to digesting all this.