Definition Climatefarming en francais

Definition Climate Farming

Climate farming uses agricultural means to keep carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses from escaping into the atmosphere. Like organic farming, climate farming maintains biodiversity and ecological balance on productive, argicultural land. But climate farmers like Hans-Peter Schmidt go a step further and covert leftover organic mass into biochar, a solid carbon compound that can improve soil quality. Biochar production also creates a kind of gas that can then be burned to help generate power. A climate farm could grow food, generate power, and help keep carbon out of the air.

Climatefarming – Pour une agriculture durable

von Hans-Peter Schmidt

Le climatefarming est souvent décrit comme une méthode agricole au moyen de laquelle du CO2 est prélevé de l’atmosphère et stocké de façon stable dans le sol sous forme de carbone. Ceci pourrait permettre de freiner le changement climatique. Mais le climatefarming, c’est également un concept écologique durable pour l’agriculture du future, qui produira aussi bien des denrées alimentaires que de l’énergie et de l’air propre, encouragera la biodiversité et protégera le paysage.

Au travers de leurs feuilles, les plantes prélèvent du dioxyde de carbone contenu dans l’air et le transforment à l’aide de la lumière, de substances minérales et de l’eau en molécules carboniques. Lorsque la plante meurt ou pourrit, ou si elle est mangée et digérée, les molécules longues de carbone sont de nouveau scindées. Ce processus libère de l’énergie et donc du carbone qui, composé à plus de 99% de CO2, s’évapore dans l’atmosphère. (en savoir plus ...)

Dienstag, 29. Januar 2013

Biochar Cookstoves Boost Health for People and Crops

Cookstoves that can produce biochar, like the one pictured above in western Kenya, can be a key tool in fighting respiratory disease and boosting agricultural production.

Photograph courtesy ACON

Stacey Schultz

For National Geographic News

Published January 29, 2013

Like many of her neighbors in Amubri, an indigenous community at the southern tip of Costa Rica, Gloria Torress Buitrago relied for years on afogón for cooking. The traditional open-fire stove is common in Amubri (map), and so are the dire health effects. "It was hard to look around and just breathe without feeling the smoke burning the eyes or throat," Buitrago said. One cousin suffered from asthma, and everyone in her family was constantly tearing up from the wood fire's smoke.

Buitrago was just one of 3 billion people worldwide who rely on such open-fire cookstoves. A recent global health study found that the fumes from those stoves was the largest environmental health threat in the world today, killing 3.5 million people a year—more deaths than caused by malaria and HIV/AIDS combined. (See related blog post: "Cookstove Smoke Is 'Largest Environmental Threat,' Global Health Study Finds.") Cookstoves that burn cleaner can help fight this epidemic, but they can do even more than that when configured to produce biochar, a dark, fine-grained residue that can become a prized asset for rural communities.

Biochar Clean Cookstoves Boost Health for People and Crops

Climatefarming in northern Senegal