Biochar is a soil—improving substrate made from phytomass pyrolysis. In Southeast Asia, its application decreases due to the long-term growth of biochar cost and thus caused further prolongation of the payback period. In the Euro-American civilization the biochar application is already almost forgotten once it has been much earlier recognized that the crop yields can be increased much faster with higher doses of nutrients and other agrochemicals. The payback period can be expected in decades. Such a long-time (...) investment into soil fertility raises also many ethical questions. The final decision combines issues of social responsibility, risk and other financial indicators as well as personal preferences and more. The attitudes of Western and Central European decision makers in the agriculture business segment were analyzed on the basis of electronic questionnaire survey and a subsequent interview through their local unions. According to the data, most of them did not know about the possibilities of a more environmentally friendly approach to soil enhancement based on the addition of a fertilizer in the form of biochar. Among others, the collected data also shows that the decision makers from Western Europe have a much different ethical approach to the land and financial indicators than the Central Europeans. (shrink)

Political theory has long depended upon a clear boundary between life and non-life. Even work which emphasizes non-human beings (e.g., in animal rights, posthumanism or “new materialism”) continues to reinforce the divide between the organic and the inorganic. This article undermines that division, highlighting marginal cases of life. The organicity of certain rocks and biochar, the growth of crystals, the machinic qualities of viruses: all point to an instability in the excluded middle between life and non-life. The article suggests (...) alternative philosophical traditions to which political theory could turn—namely, panpsychism, hylozoism, and traditional animism—as conceptual and theoretical resources to examine these interstices. (shrink)