I know very few people who have any knowledge of this subject. I feel that it is important and offer it as something to discuss on this forum. The Government food agency has been going on lately about there being no nutritional difference between organically grown food and the rest of the stuff we tend to eat obtained from the supermakets etc. It may be true but the difference is usually in the taste, and it hasn't been weeks travelling all 0ver the world. The large Bio-companies are now using this as an excuse to introduce Genetically modified foods, and that the GM foods will be better able to larger crops to feed the worlds growing population. They have had a long time to prove it and they haven't succeeded yet - have they???
Side stepping a little, the country have been charged to develop green energy - hence the large electricity generating wind mills springing up all over the place.
A lot of research is being carried out all over the world into Terra Preta (Google it for more information). It is a fertile soil found in the Amazon valley in Brazil and is reckoned to be 9 time more fertile than ordinary soil. It was developed by the Mayan indians more that 1500 years ago and although they vanished when the Spanish and Portugese invaded South America, it is stall as fertile to this day. The development was through the use of charcoal which is the burning of wood without oxygen (for those who don't know). In fact charcoal can be made from any biological material and is currently being made from chicken manure to sawdust.
Biochar is a good name for it. (Google it) Looking at it purely from the point of view of growing food, it has been shown that by adding it to the soil crops can increase by up to 50%. Still experimental, but showing very positive signs.
In the production of biochar burnable gasses are given off, i.e Hydrogen, methane, carbon monoxide, to the extent that they are in excess of what is needed to make the biochar and can be used to produce electricity etc.
Production of Biochar can be by large machines capable of burning most of the refuse collected by local authorities , down to large clay pots used if Africa which is also used for cooking. Make your own in your garden and turn your weeds into biochar. If most biological waste was turned into biochar we might be able to do away with the windmills and the articficial fertilizers currently polluting our rivers.

Bigal