Key Farmers Cameroon's coordinator, Etchi Daniel-Jones, at a plot in Ediki, in which the difference between char and non-char maize was exceptionally big. In this case, the plants on the control (left lower corner) were barely in their 8th leaf stage, whereas the plants on the char-plots (right, upper corner), were already tasseling. Photo credit: Laurens Rademakers, Etchi Daniel-Jones. Source: biocharfund.org.
Biochar Fund has reported extremely encouraging first results from its field trials in South West Cameroon. Working with small groups of subsistence farmers around the town of Kumba, the Fund set up and managed a large-scale experiment to assess whether maize (corn) yields were improved by the addition of biochar to the soil. The biochar was made from local agricultural wastes and tree thinnings. The data from the trials strongly suggests that biochar adds greatly to food production. Some areas showed yield improvements of more than 250% over the control plots. The areas dosed with biochar also showed substantially increased production of crop biomass, including roots, stalks, and leaves.
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