Quarantine log: day 42

After three weeks, the team’s morale is running heavy on the academic side and low on the emotional well-being (or perhaps I am being presumptuous and overdramatic); about half of us have decided to listen almost exclusively to up-beat music, as epitomized by Doja Cat’s “Boss Bitch”.

Debriefing on this week’s research topic (testing procedures, qualifications, etc), we found that the incredible amount of literature available on the subject meant that we only could do a very superficial pass on what notable organizations, namely the WHO and EPA, have suggested and implemented. Testing focuses on four major categories: chemical, radionucleic, biological, and aesthetic. Of these, the most pertinent to public health was biological, due to its association with the indicator organism E. coli and, consequently, the cholera toxin. When considering soil composition, basic tests measure the pH and available nutrients—sodium bicarbonate, potassium, phosphorus, sodium, and magnesium, most significantly. However, cadmium testing is an emerging issue in the cacao industry, and may be worth looking into. Fortunately, soil specifically used for cacao (and for agricultural purposes) depands predominantly on carbon nutrients, which biochar would be helpful in augmenting. In terms of biochar testing, predictably, we can refer to the International Biochar Initiative, and refer to the ratio between hydrogen and carbon to determine the carbon storage class, the fertilizer class, and particle size as a means of evaluating nutrient (and, to some extent, pathogen) retention.

Though our research was fairly exhaustive, it is, of course, incomplete and broad. For example, we need to scrutinize even more closely what biologic and chemical contaminants we should focus our attention. But even more pressing is the question of accessibility to tests. Given our distant locations and now even more limited access to labs and materials, we must decide which experimentation parameters we can compromise on, and which we can find proxies. Soil testing, therefore, is somewhat problematic, given that there is no standard format for lab tests, and the sample tests are not always provided in the website; the scarcity of information means that we may have to do additional testing or spend more time researching alternative tests.

On the whole, our extensive research phase has broadened our understanding of the context of Ghana and provided us with more insights on how to approach not just the use of biochar, but also on the complex nuances of the political climate and social parameters in which we would be working. Our design and previous thoughts were, as expected, flawed and limited, and we are starting to more deeply question things like: does our design need to be scaled up to be effective? How can we better correlate soil testing, water testing, and apparatus testing? And now in quarantine, how can we expect to proceed without access to our cacao husks, and to what extent can we say the soil and water samples from our local areas are sufficiently similar to that in Ghana?