Underneath a greenhouse on his 11-acre farm on the northwest tip of Fayetteville, Jody Hardin runs his hand through a bag of what looks like charcoal.
This pile of jet-black chips is known as 'biochar' - a product made from burning organic material from agriculture or forest waste.
"It's made using a much more efficient advanced technique that doesn't pollute when you're doing it," Hardin said. "You basically you have your feedstock that fuels the burn and it can be any nature-based material like manure, wood chips, rice hulls, nut shells, corn stover, any kind of agricultural waste."
Hardin - a fifth-generation farmer - was first introduced to biochar in 2011 through a USDA project he worked on in with sustainable farming hub the Kerr Center in Oklahoma.
"And it was life-changing because that's where I was introduced to biochar and soil microbes and compost teas," he said. "All that regenerate soil that has been sterilized from decades of chemical agriculture."
Hardin's latest venture, the Carbon Chicken Project, is ambitiously taking that biochar and combining it with chicken litter for fertilizer.
"It's like the holy grail of fertilizers we like to think," Hardin said. "It's the next organic Miracle Grow."
The product is called "Carbon Chicken 80:20" because it is 80% recycled chicken litter and 20% biochar and consists of small pellets that are mixed into soil. Hardin explained it can deliver important nutrients back into the farmland, and while chicken litter on its own can be used as a fertilizer adding the biochar, he said adding the biochar helps to absorb chemicals released by the chicken litter and puts that back into the soil while also allowing crops to hold in more moisture.
"And in that biochar we make this very biologically active tea and we soak the biochar in the tea and and we try to capture over 200 different strains of very active soil microbes," he said. "Blend that with the 80% composted poultry litter and then pelletize it. So you get slow release, precision application."
A 2022 study from the University of Kansas found that crops which used organic fertilizers are able to sequester more carbon dioxide than those farmed with chemical fertilizers or no fertilizers. Hardin said the other major benefit of his product is that it diverts chicken litter from waterways.
" But what we're trying to do is upcycle poultry litter," Hardin said. "And sort of directly address the lawsuit issues that's going on between Oklahoma and the 12 poultry integrators here."
Hardin is referring to a nearly 20-year-long legal battle between Oklahoma and several poultry companies including Tyson, which alleged run-off from poultry production directly polluted the Illinois River. Hardin believes his initiative, if scaled up, could be a solution. But, he said the biggest hurdle is getting the poultry producers involved.
"We've talked to [Oklahoma officials] and they love our idea. They're just telling me we got to get big poultry behind us before it can work," Hardin said. "We're trying to get the community behind us so we can stand up to the big poultry guys who are not even thinking about sequestering carbon or reducing greenhouse gases in their operations. And this is a tremendous opportunity to harness nutrients that the poultry industry is wasting."
One glimmer of hope for Carbon Chicken is a more-than-$591,000 grant the company was recently awarded from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to research its methods over a 5 year period.
"And it's going to allow us to put biochar in commercial poultry houses for the first time in a small percentage in the bedding," he said. "We've already seen results where there's significant improvements in the air quality that the farmer breathes."
Hardin's hope is that Carbon Chicken can be the catalyst for a circular economy that doesn't just offset but actually captures carbon at every step of production. And he sees the end result would be the production of a certified carbon-negative egg.
"Which is my magnum opus right now," Hardin said. "That means every egg that you're buying you're actually sequestering carbon somewhere permanently you know like that's never been done. And the poultry industry and biochar and pyrolysis they're all the building blocks for what is bioenergy carbon capture and storage system. And that's what we're trying to build right here."
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. The authoritative record of KUAF programming is the audio record.
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