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Thursday 23 August 2018

Crop residue burning in Thailand - WarmHeart (part 1of 5)

Dr Michael Shafer's work with biochar from his 'WarmHeart' base in northern Thailand is well reported here (see WarmHeart tag). Michael is kicking off a 5-part report focused on crop residue burning. Below is his announcement on this to the yahoo international biochar discussion group. It is a highly relevant read for those of us interested in solving regional haze issues.
d.michael.shafer@gmail.com
Aug 21 3:04 AM
"I live in North Thailand where smoke from burning  corn and rice fields blocks the sun a couple of months a year. Burning wheat straw smoke closes Delhi every year, too.

Because most of the farmers who burn are poor and small, collecting their crop waste for central processing is uneconomical and their fields are too small, too steep, too rocky to plow, even if they could afford a tractor.

They are so poor, however, that converting their crop waste to biochar makes lots of sense. Establishing village-scale social enterprises to process local biochar into value added products is also not only appealing to farmers but a replicable way to solve the crop waste burning problem where it starts - in small farmers' fields.

This is the first of a five part series in which I make the case for a small-scale biochar social enterprise business model for addressing the problem. The remaining four will appear over the next few weeks.


I would welcome any comments, suggestions, corrections or criticisms."


photo
Dr. D. Michael Shafer
Founder and Director, Warm Heart
61 M.8 T.Maepang A.Phrao 50190 Chiang Mai Thailand

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