Reducing carbon emissions by reducing trucking needs is the easy part of reducing the carbon footprint of S.A.V.E. birdseed. We have gone beyond that to collaborate with partners on carbon sequestration research centered on our birdseed crop. With support from the NRCS Conservation Innovation Grant, we are working with the Carbon Char Group, LLC and the USDA Agricultural Research Service to experiment with the use of a carbon-based soil amendment (biochar) to sequester carbon in the soil.

The beneficial microorganisms that enrich and enhance soil productivity are degraded and destroyed by modern agricultural practices.  Ultimately, this leads to reductions in crop performance, nutrition, and productivity that must be offset with increased fertilizer use. Although experiments with biochar are occurring elsewhere, those on the S.A.V.E. sunflower crop will differ notably because they combine charcoal with beneficial soil microorganisms (BIOCHAR+). Thus, use of a soil amendment like BIOCHAR+ can improve crop productivity by enhancing the soil's organic layer while helping growers reduce costs.

Even more exciting is biochar's potential to take atmospheric carbon and virtually lock it into the soil for decades if not centuries. Charcoal, the primary component of biochar, provides a way to concentrate nearly pure carbon in a package that decomposes very slowly. Thus use of biochar could become a valuable weapon against one of the greatest, global environmental challenges that we have ever faced, an increasing atmospheric carbon level and its catastrophic consequence - global warming.