When I first arrived at the Sachamama Center in Lamas, Peru to start the Living Routes program there, I was much looking forward to getting my hands in the dirt, to learn more about soil and its role as a provider to all life on earth. This appreciation and recognition of Pachamama (The Earth Mama) as the dust that formed all of us, maintains us, and reincorporates us into her was only furthered by individuals and communities’ efforts to nurture Pachamama. This nurturing creates as a result a regenerative soil, soil that with the proper care will produce bounties of food and medicine that will nurture us in return. Terra preta, or “black earth”, is referred to as yana allpa in Quechua. Hundreds of years ago, pre-Columbian communities thrived off of this soil to maintain populations as large as 200,000 to 400,000 people, producing yields far greater than the soils of the Central Amazon Basin alone. Unfortunately, the knowledge of how to produce yana allpa was lost with the displacement of these communities. Not until its rediscovery by archaeologists in the 1990s did this soil once again gain momentum and interest from multiple communities.
The Sachamama Center has been working with native communities surrounding Lamas, including Shukshuyaku and Solo, to create this soil and use it as a means of permanent agriculture within their communities. This Chacra-Huerto Project has been welcomed by these communities and the knowledge of how to make yana allpa and apply it to their community chacra-huertos has returned to the communities to help to once more sustain them, helping to avoid long walks to individual chacras and the practice of slash-and-burn agriculture (an unsustainable practice for the little amount of land they have to grow food on in their chacras). We students also had the opportunity to take a journey and engage in an experience to gather the resources that sustain us in a way fairly atypical to all of us. By gathering leaves with those little white spots on them from Sachamama (the Forest Mama) and performing ikaros (giving thanks through tobacco smoke), mixing that with unrefined sugar “reduced to a factor of 20” and a binder to get a fermenting mixture, we created a “mother” of effective microorganisms to add to a pile of manure compost with biochar (crop residue “cooked”, starving it of oxygen and creating charcoal) and broken fired clay bricks already in it to make a batch of yana allpa! We did this with faith in the process, an empirical knowledge once highly valued by native communities and regaining its old status in the communities as some dank soil that will serve Pachamama and ourselves well. I looked at this soil not as a scientifically proven successful amendment to soil, but rather as a well looked after piece of our Mother Earth that serves to bring people together to grow a bounty and produce a feast of food and medicine for the community. It is valuable not because tests proved its worth, but rather because the naked eye saw that it was good and so spread this knowledge, giving thanks all the way.
Knowing that often in my society the science says it all, and wanting another interaction and opportunity to “prove” terra preta’s worth to those unfamiliar with it and weary of accepting empirical knowledge as truth, I took advantage of the “collaborative project” portion of my requirements in Soil Science. With three other students, I made terra preta and tested it against manure compost with biochar alone and with EM-1 (effective microorganisms branded and sold as a microbial inoculant) alone, as well as against conventional potting soil. After measurements of germination rate, aboveground growth and final biomass of the romaine lettuce planted in each treatment, as well as pH and nutrient content tests of each soil treatment, were done, terra preta made us all proud. The manure composts that we added either EM-1 or biochar alone to did not yield a tall lettuce crop, nor was the root growth very extensive or impressive. Potting soil, with its high amount of added fertilizers (cheaters!), did have the tallest lettuce crop, but the root growth was not impressive, the roots going straight to the bottom and wrapping around the edges of the pot. The manure compost with all of the terra preta amendments added (biochar, EM-1, and broken-up TERRA cotta pots J), however, had the highest germination rate, lettuce height slightly shorter than that of potting soil, and an extremely impressive root structure; the roots were dispersed throughout the soil, with small root hairs coming off of the main roots. When my group partner left me the message explaining the root structure I couldn’t help but smile! I will say that my professor did her job in critiquing the results severely and noting that we failed to see if the differences were statistically significant and forgot to put in error bars on our graphs. Though with a biomass 30% greater than that of potting soil, I would say that the naked eye saw that it was good. It was enough for me. Terra preta is an amazing quality soil. I’m doing an independent study next semester making biochar, a biodigester to produce methane gas to make the biochar, hopefully EM from scratch de Sachamama, and hopefully more! Maybe I’ll be lucky enough to start up a gardening project with HEAL, the student-led sustainable community development organization at my school that I currently have the honor of being in charge of, with some terra preta soils… I will also be editing that lab report to include the statistical significance or lack thereof of our results, and would be happy to share it with anyone interested… no, it’s not a published study, but it’s certainly a start and I think enough encouragement to really take it on in individual and community endeavors and engagement with Pachamama, Sachamama, Qillamama (the Moon Mama known to play her own part in growing a great crop) and all the mamas! I would also encourage anyone to look at the success that published studies from Cornell University credit the original terra preta plots in the Central Amazon Basin to.
After my initial interaction with yana allpa in Peru, I stated soon after in a blog entry that “in my opinion, yana allpa will do a whole lot more than nurture seeds to grow food and medicine; it may also gather people, stories, skills, creating and continuing a community where people help each other, consider the whole before acting”. There is still a lot of work to prove this a viable alternative to the scientific and agricultural community. Though, personally, this is not going to delay me in introducing terra preta to my own community, sharing the stories told and skills and experiences gained in Peru with my family, friends, and any neighbor willing to listen and engage in a project to provide to each other food, medicine, and an increased sense of co-habitation with each other and the soil that sustains us. The smile on my face was a response to a heart overjoyed to share that the reverence given to terra preta is not purely anecdotal. The science is there too and merits attention from the scientific community, a group of people that help to make large decisions concerning the use of our resources. Why mine for fertilizers if Pachamama carries the nutrients and living conditions for soil microbes right below our feet? If we act in the way our mamas act, a way in tune with the rhythms and flows of everything around us, harnessing the good by being informed, humble, respectful, thankful and modest, we will know how to harness the life and fertility of our mamas to make a soil that can not only sustain and cure us, but can cure and improve the living and non-living and all essential parts of the biosphere. You may say that I am romanticizing terra preta, and maybe I am, but it does not feel like that to me, and it may not to you as well if you get your own hands in dat dank dirt and feel and see it yourself.
Matt Callo
Program Manager | HEAL | CPO 2170
Class of 2012 | CPO 271 | 865-296-1792
http://healberea.wordpress.com | http://www.facebook.com/pages/HEAL/148500048571611
