20 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY FEBRUARY 5-11, 2026 www.montereycountynow.com Before joining the Department of Biology, Agriculture and Chemistry at CSUMB in 2022, Arun Jani was researching sustainable agricultural practices in a semi-arid region of South Africa. In a dry region with low rainfall, farms he was working with there were entirely dependent on that rainfall for a successful harvest. His focus was simple: How to help the soil retain more moisture. “We were testing biochar as a soil amendment in corn production—basically as a subsistence crop,” Jani says. “And it worked really well. We had strong preliminary results.” Using dead or naturally fallen eucalyptus, Jani and his team produced biochar and mixed it with manure before adding it to planting stations where corn seeds were sown. The biochar acted like a sponge, binding nutrients, improving water retention and making crops more drought-resistant—results that were visible after just one growing season. Years later, Jani brought that experience to collaborate with the Elkhorn Slough Foundation at Brothers Ranch, a farm managed by grower Jesus Calvillo since 1978. ESF began leasing the land in the early 2000s. “This site, we’re really excited about it, because you can even tell by looking at the soil, it’s very sandy so it’s really low fertility,” Jani says, standing beside the test plot adjacent to the former eucalyptus grove. “It really gives us a good opportunity to see what the biochar might do for improving soil fertility and also things like water retention, so we can use less water over time.” I ntroduced in the 1996 Farm Bill, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) offers technical assistance to help growers improve conservation practices through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP). The program supports conservation practices ranging from soil health improvements to water conservation and climate resilience. But biochar took years to enter the conversation. After pilot studies began in 2015, the practice finally became eligible for EQIP support nationwide in 2022. Under the current guidelines, EQIP supports the application of about 6 cubic yards of biochar per acre—an amount that Jani wanted to test. Specifically, Jani’s goal is to be able to provide insight into whether or not the approved amounts by the NRCS are actually effective in farming scenarios in Monterey County. “What we’re doing is comparing the status quo of what federal payouts support to an elevated rate,” Jani says. “That way we can report back to NRCS and say: These rates work really well— or maybe we can tell them, hey, you need to up the rate that you financially support.” Long-term research on this question, particularly in Monterey County farming systems, remains scarce. A few critical but precise ingredients are needed to make biochar: heat, water, and a whole lot of biomass. Walking through the bits of flying embers, the heat from the carbonator noticeable from more than 20 feet away, Dunkell explains that they’re hoping to process about 15 tons of eucalyptus material over the course of a few months. “You get like a 95-percent reduction in weight,” he says. “And then on volume, it’s on a similar scale—about 90-percent reduction in volume.” The Elkhorn Slough Foundation previously used this same carbonator in 2023, partnering with Ventana Forestry to convert 8,000 tons of eucalyptus into 200 tons of biochar within the Elkhorn Highlands Reserve. Supported by Caltrans and NRCS, the project removed six acres of eucalyptus to protect sensitive maritime chaparral, oak woodland and freshwater wetland habitat. Much of the biochar from the last project was given to a mix of recipients: a little to Grey Bears for its compost and gardens in Santa Cruz, some for Elkhorn Highlands Reserve grassland restoration, some went to Jani to begin testing. For another research purpose, a portion went to the Central Coast Wetlands Group to conduct trials on using biochar to remove phosphate from lettuce washwater that drains from Salinas salad plants. Roughly the size of a 40-cubic-yard Biochar is produced through pyrolysis, a process of removing the oxygen while burning biomass—such as wood, forestry debris or manure— to create a carbon-rich material. ESF is scaling a practice Indigenous people have utilized for thousands of years. It involves creating a pit in the ground to fill with a type of biomass such as bones or forest debris, covering it to limit oxygen then burning that material to produce biochar. “IT’S A DREAM SCENARIO.”
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