(The Center Square) – Diesel exhaust is usually treated as toxic. According to Gary Lewis, an entrepreneurial farmer and inventor from Pincher Creek, Alberta, Canada, diesel exhaust is not toxic, or at least not in modern high-efficiency internal combustion engines. He’s developed a method to convert carbon dioxide in raw exhaust into plant food.
A dozen dryland wheat producers gathered in Reardan, Wash., on Tuesday to listen to Lewis’s presentation on “bio-agtive emissions farming.” He described developing the system as going from the Wright Brothers on the beach at Kitty Hawk to building jet engines in two decades.
Lewis was an engine mechanic who understood machines when he decided to switch to farming 600 acres north of Calgary.
“I’m standing in the field, and it’s green, and I just quit my job and realized I didn’t know how plants grew,” he said.
Local agronomists focused on adjusting soil chemistry to feed the plants, but the amendments – materials added to soil to improve its chemical, physical, or biological properties – stopped working.
Lewis studied plant physiology and applied his mechanical knowledge to determine why his Timothy hay was salty.
Twenty-four years later, he is on his sixth generation of equipment that turns carbon emissions from every tractor pass into a plant stimulant.
For farmers coping with low crop prices, the possibility of eliminating synthetic nitrogen fertilizers by converting tractor carbon emissions to feed the soil biology and draw nitrogen out of the air is tempting.
The system captures carbon dioxide from diesel exhaust and runs it through tanks containing a biologically active solution. The carbon feeds the biology in the tank and is oxidized into a growth stimulant, which is then “vaped” back into the soil, seeds, and plants. Lewis says he hasn’t applied fertilizer in more than 20 years.
Farmers using his patented system manage the fermenting microbial solution the same way a baker manages a sourdough starter. Lewis said about 200,000 acres in the U.S. and Canada are currently licensed for bio-agtive farming.
The process has been studied as a way to grow more nutrient-dense food. The key is increasing the uptake of micronutrients, which depends on a healthy and complex soil microbiome.
“We’re eating out of a simplified food chain, and it affects human health,” Lewis said.
He described the long-term impact of adding nitrogen, a commonly applied fertilizer, on the plant’s ability to tap into the trace minerals in healthy soil.
“We are what our plants eat,” Lewis explained.
The microbiome surrounding the roots is like the human gut, full of microbes necessary to extract nutrients. Excess nitrogen breaks the relationship between the plant and its digestive system, shutting down the availability of micronutrients to plant roots and interrupting the carbon cycle, water cycle and mineral cycles essential to plant resilience to drought and pests.
Lewis is also studying the potential for additional farm income by tapping into global markets willing to pay for carbon capture and sequestration. He hopes to launch that program later this year.
