A Biochar and Soil Health Field Day, hosted by the New Mexico State University’s Cooperative Extension Service, will focus on how to make biochar, which is charcoal produced by burning organic materials under reduced oxygen conditions, and practices to improve soil health.

Using biochar is one way to build healthy soil, and materials to make biochar often come from agricultural wastes such as pecan wood trimmings, city yard waste, manure and many other organic materials.

“Building the health of arid soils is becoming more critical, especially considering recurrent droughts and the climate change that we are experiencing in the region,” said John Idowu, Extension Plant Sciences Extension Specialist/Extension agronomist. “Scientists have shown that the soil can become more resilient to the increasing climatic variability when it is healthy.”

The Las Cruces field day will include a demonstration on how to use the Ring of Fire biochar kiln to produce biochar from pecan wood wastes. NMSU’s Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department fabricated the biochar kiln.

Trial information also will be shared from the long-term soil health research and demonstration site at Leyendecker. Field day participants will have the opportunity to see different soil health practices such as cover crops and soil amendments in the field.

The field day is Arpil 27, 7:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. Wednesday, at the Leyendecker Plant Science Center, 7200 Plant Science Circle, Las Cruces. Click this like to register.

The New Mexico Department of Agriculture’s Healthy Soil Program is funding the biochar project and, in large part, the long-term soil health research site at Leyendecker. The purpose of the Healthy Soil Program is “to promote and support farming and ranching systems and other forms of land management that increase soil organic matter, aggregate stability, microbiology and water retention to improve the health, yield and profitability of the soils of the state.” The USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture also has funded a Ph.D. student position to work on the research component of the soil health site.

For more information, contact Idowu at [email protected].