Biochar: Applying Ancient Knowledge in the Information Age

Source: Planet2025 News Network Tags: Panama, paulownia, ENOCIS, biochar, Amazon, carbon footprint, environment, agriculture, Chepo, New Era Farms, greenhouse gases, slash and burn, biofuel

Biochar: Applying Ancient Knowledge in the Information Age

Careless development without regard for the earth’s natural balance, has led to potentially disastrous levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Now, that we have to deal with the reality of climate change, we commonly find ourselves looking to modern technology to provide a solution.

NASA has just announced that in January 2009, it will make use of the latest technologies and equipment available to man, when it launches a new mission called the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO). The goal of the mission is to obtain accurate measurements of the level of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere and a more precise understanding of where it is being captured and stored on Earth.

For various reasons, precise information about how much carbon is being put into the atmosphere and where it is being absorbed by natural carbon sinks has been, up to this point, lacking. The OCO will use three high-resolution spectrometers to observe “sunlight reflected off Earth at the precise wavelengths that reveal the presence of carbon dioxide and molecular oxygen.”¹ and will be able to obtain the most precise data on this subject ever collected which should allow them to uncover unknown patterns and cycles in the Earth’s carbon dioxide.

It is true that advances in technology, such as this mission by NASA, can give us the opportunity to better understand the natural carbon cycle of our Earth. Yet, relying on modern technology alone is an expensive and therefore, for many countries, inaccessible route towards solving the climate change problem.

Instead, many experts are pointing to the potential of an ancient, low-tech, carbon sequestration technique once used by the Amazonian Indians, called biochar, that could provide an integrated solution for the current and related issues of climate change, food security, and sustainable energy production.

When trees and other organic materials decay or burn they release all the carbon they had stored during their lifetimes, as part of a carbon neutral cycle. The process of making biochar involves the heating or burning of organic materials (can be waste materials) in the absence of oxygen, a process known as pyrolysis, which results in the production of a carbon-rich, fine-grained form of charcoal that is then buried. The heated, non-oxygenated decomposition that occurs in the “burning” stage, gives off energy that can be used as an efficient biofuel.

This process reduces the carbon that would be emitted by the natural decaying or oxygenated burn of the material by 90%, and stores that carbon in the leftover charred material. Therefore the production of energy in the biochar process goes beyond being carbon-neutral and is actually considered carbon-negative because it takes carbon dioxide out of its natural cycle and sequesters it in the soil, for up to 5,000 years.

In addition, the resulting biochar is extremely helpful when added to soils, because it holds onto nutrients and water. In recent experiments on 10 farms, using biochar as a fertilizer resulted in up to three times greater crop yields than without it.² Biochar is also the secret ingredient behind the famously fertile terra pretta (dark earth) of the ancient Amazonians, that was first observed by European explorers in the 16th century.³ As reported by Reuters “Soils containing biochar made by Amazon people thousands of years ago still contain up to 70 times more black carbon than surrounding soils and are still higher in nutrients”.

The beauty of biochar is that it's a time-tested and integrated solution. Biochar minimizes waste, while producing energy, and sequestering carbon. It has also been shown to further reduce greenhouse gases by decreasing nitrous oxide and methane gas emissions from soil. It reduces the use of fossil-fuel based fertilizers, and increases soil fertility and crop yields. The “slash-and char” method, which involves slow smoldering of farm wastes to fertilize existing plots, could replace the less effective and more damaging slash-and-burn farming technique that generates greenhouse gases and destroys forests.

The main boundary to its use is that it has yet to be proven on a commercial scale. But perhaps that is about to change. Biochar is already being used on a number of small farms. For example, the Times Magazine recently reported on a chicken farm in West Virginia that uses chicken manure as the organic material for pyrolysis, which creates enough energy to run the farm. The farmer is also able to profit by selling the resulting biochar as fertilizer.

Just last Friday, a large-scale biochar enterprise created by British environmental entrepreneurs, Craig Sams, (one of the founders of the popular Green & Black organic chocolate company) and Dan Morrel, (co-founder of Future Forests, the first carbon offsetting company), got its first multi-million-pound investment from venture capitalists in California’s Silicon Valley.

This project will begin running trials with biochar in Sussex and Belize starting in early 2009, and hopes to build biochar into a worldwide enterprise. According to Mr. Sams, who called biochar “a treasure to be buried in the earth”, CO2 in the air could be reduced to pre-Industrial Revolution levels by 2050, if only 2.5% of the world’s productive land would be used to produce biochar.⁴

The ancient people of the Amazon who used biochar techniques could probably not have conceived of the OCO mission NASA will soon undertake, and yet they developed a land management technique that shows they had a superior understanding of the Earth’s delicate balance. Perhaps it is a sign of our true modernity that we are growing more willing to recognize and incorporate ancient knowledge alongside new technologies in our quest for solutions to the greatest crisis of our time.

Biochar techniques are one of the various agricultural processes being experimented with by the Enoch Olinga College (ENOCIS) www.enocis.org at their Agricultural Extension Center “New Era Farms” in Chepo, Panama www.paulownianow.org

By Mallika Nair

Sources

1. Discovery News “NASA Space Probe to Track CO2 on Earth” Dec. 5, 2008 by Irene Klotz. http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/12/05/carbon-dioxide-space.html

2. Reuters “Scientists say ancient technique cuts greenhouse gases” Dec. 5, 2008, by Gerard Wynn http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSTRE4B45KB20081205

3. Carbon: The Biochar Solution Dec. 4, 2008 by Lisa Abend http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1864279,00.html

4. The Independent “Ancient skills ‘could reverse global warming’” Nov. 7, 2008, by Geoffrey Lean. http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/ancient-skills-could-reverse-global-warming-1055700.html

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THE WORLD AFTER 2020: MBendi South Africa

In August 2008 I wrote about Wangari on our blogs. I recently decided to expand on that thought process and refocus on her efforts in Africa.

A couple of years ago I attended a stirring speech given by Wangari Mathaai, then little-known Kenyan winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. At the time I thought that the reason she had been awarded the prize was simply because she had founded a women's movement in East Africa which had planted more than six million trees. After her speech, I was little the wiser. It was only when I read her wonderful biography, Unbowed, recently that I discovered the real reason for the prize.

As East Africa's first woman with a Ph D she had taken on a very male chauvinist, highly corrupt political establishment. First she had prevented a major park in the centre of Nairobi being used to build a privately owned office block and later she was instrumental in overturning the sale of a state forest to a developer of upmarket housing. In between she planted trees, uplifted women and fought both the bureaucracy and bad farming practices. For her sins, she was physically attacked, arbitrarily arrested, faced privations in prison, ridiculed in the press and parliament and ostracized. But she persevered and today Kenya is a much greener country than it might otherwise have been.

Her book is really in two parts, with the second part given over to her fights with the powers that be. In the early chapters she paints a beautiful picture of growing up in rural Kenya - the family home and village life but most of all growing crops and vegetables. One thinks of traditional African peasants as ignorant, but they understood the soil and the climate, the plants and the animals, the insects and the old fig trees that protected the springs of gushing water. In a very sensitive way, she also describes her father's life as a worker on the farm of a white settler at the time of the Mau Mau rebellion.

Both parts of Dr Mathaai's book have resonated with me recently as I have contrasted UN forecasts of the world's undernourished growing by 40 million people to 963 million people this year and prices of staple foods up 15% or more in just the last eight weeks with news reports of new agricultural projects being started in Africa. Just a couple of months ago there was the story about how South Korea's Daewoo had been allocated 1.3 million hectares of Madagascar, a chunk the size of a small European country, to grow food for the home country; last week it was a Wall Street banker who had signed a deal with a Sudanese warlord for 400,000 hectares of land alongside the Nile; and this week it was Lonrho taking over a block of 25,000 hectares of sparsely populated land in Angola.

For a couple of years now we have been reading of biofuels projects springing up in Mozambique especially, but also Tanzania. In Sierra Leone, Addax Petroleum, with the support of the national government, is to set up a 20,000 hectares sugar cane plantation together with an ethanol distillery/factory would produce more than 1,200,000 litres of ethanol per year and a 30 MW power plant that would be able to supplement Bumbuna. The project will employ 4,000 people. All across Africa, commercial farmers are growing sugar and tobacco, two of the biggest contributors to health problems worldwide.

As I read about all these projects - and with Dr Mathaai's words ringing in my ears - I find myself asking questions. Why was the land not already being used for agricultural production when Africa is so chronically short of food? Who really owns the land being used for the projects - the national government, the tribe or the individual families living on it? What is going to happen to the people currently living on the land? Will those given jobs really earn enough to live a better life than they enjoyed before? Will the country and community really be better off or is it the offshore investors who are the only beneficiaries? More than anything, I wonder whose pockets and offshore bank accounts are going to bulge even further as a result of these projects?

If all this sounds like just another African bad news story, let me end with a ray of hope. After years of drought and famine, the government of Malawi, against the wishes and so-called better judgment of the donor community, set up a scheme to distribute seeds and fertilizer at subsidized prices to small farmers. The result is that today Malawi produces more food than it consumes and earns foreign currency from exporting to the countries round about. What we really need is for Africans to use African land to fill African stomachs first, then foreign stomachs in exchange for filling the bank accounts of the local farmers who did all the hard work.

Incidentally, if you go searching the Internet for information on the African agricultural sector, you will find there is plenty of information on agricultural aid to the continent, but precious little about who produces how much of what. So our researchers have started pulling together all the pieces of this tricky jig-saw puzzle, starting with paulownia elongata, which you canread more about at www.paulownianow.org. We'll keep you posted as they update more of our pages. Some other useful links to further stimulate your thinking about where the world is going.Tags: reforestation, Africa, Wangari, Wangari Mathaai, Nobel Peace Prize, Nobel Prize, Africa, reforestation, fertilizer, biomass, paulownia

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Planting Trees Saves Cash, Research Confirms

Emily Sohn, Discovery News Tags: global warming, reforestation, environment, ecology, paulownia, agriculture

Jan. 22, 2009 -- Plant a tree: Save 25 bucks. Researchers in California have found that planting trees in strategic locations around your house can lower your summertime electricity bill by that much or more.

The concept is common sense: Extra shade reduces the need for air conditioning. But this is the first study to use actual utility bills to nail down the details of where trees should be placed to help people chip away at their environmental footprints -- and their budgets.

"Nobody says we're going to cure global warming just with urban trees," said lead researcher Geoffrey Donovan, an economist at the Portland Forestry Sciences Lab in Oregon. "But they're one of the nicer ways of doing it."

For the new study, Donovan and colleague Dave Butry, an economist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, looked at 460 single-family homes in one neighborhood of Sacramento, Calif.

Using Google Earth, the researchers looked down on each house from above. They measured the diameter of all tree crowns in three zones: 20, 40, and 60 feet away from the building, and in four directions: north, south, east and west.

Based on the distances of the trees from the buildings and the sizes of their crowns, they calculated where shadows would be cast at various times throughout the day.

The electric company provided copies of each home's electric bill, while the county gave data about factors that might affect electricity use, including house size, lot size, and whether the house had a pool. A computer model then controlled for these variables to see whether trees had an effect on summertime energy use above and beyond those factors.

The study, in press at the journal Energy and Buildings, found that people used about 5 percent less electricity (about $25 less) during the summer when they had trees within 40 feet of their home's south side or within 60 feet of its west side.

Late in the day, when temperatures are highest and people are more likely to turn on the A/C, trees cast longer shadows, which explains the bigger buffer zone on the house's west side.

These findings gave real-world support for the results of previous, more theoretical work.

Unexpectedly, when trees sat on a house's north side, electric bills went up. The result might be a statistical anomaly, Donovan said. But he speculated that blocked breezes or the need for more lighting could also explain the finding.

Over a 100-year period, the scientists calculated, planting a London pine tree on the west side of a Sacramento home could reduce the house's net carbon use by 30 percent -- half through sequestering by the tree and half through reduced electricity use. Financial savings will increase, Donovan added, as utility companies start charging more for electricity at peak times of day.

It's probably worth planting trees around your home, agreed Jim Simpson, a meteorologist at the Center for Urban Forest Research in Davis, Calif., despite the costs of buying trees and taking care of them. But the specifics of which trees to plant and where to plant them will likely differ in places that are colder, wetter, or otherwise different from the steaming valleys of California.

"In the Sacramento area, air conditioning is a fairly big thing, and we have mild winters," Simpson told Discovery News. "It would be a good idea to do this sort of study in other climate zones where heating is a bigger deal."

One of the fastest growing shade trees in the world is paulownia elongata which can grow an amazing sixteen feet a year offering shade and energy savings in as little as two years. For more information on paulownia you may refer to the web site www.paulownianow.org

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Recent Changes in Panama Immigration Laws Effect Reforestation Visas

Tags: Panama, Panama Law, Panama Visas, Panama Immigration Law, Panama Reforestion Visa, managed forests, PanAmerican Properties, ANAM, paulowniaThe new Immigration Law of the Republic of Panama, Executive Decree No. 320 of 8 August 2008 which regulates law No. 3 of February 22 2008 has made substantial changes in the requirements to be eligible to apply for a reforestation visa in this country. Section No. 2 of this law on page 22 of the original text which can be read in its entirety in English at the following url http://www.panampro.com/index_archivos/law.htm   has increased the minimum investment from $40,000 USD to $60,000 USD and has added an additional requirement of the acquisition of at least 10 hectares of land.

This provision of the law allows both for individual or corporate ownership of the land or an investment of at least 10 hectares of managed forest relieving the investor from the necessity of managing the property themselves and dealing with the onerous labor laws, the social security requirements and the constant holidays which plague the nations development.

However much is to be said about the structure of the law. Projects now need to be registered by ANAM, the country’s National Environmental Agency which hopefully will establish stricter controls and regulation of reforestation in Panama.

This new legal initiative opens the door for better regulation of tax laws regarding reforestation and greater opportunity for protecting our nation’s forests by establishing “Chain of Custody” requirements for these managed plantations.   Hopefully it will be the beginning of more selective requirements controlling which species of tree will be eligible for tax exemptions.

One such tree should be paulownia elongata, the Princess Tree, because of not only its high market value but because of the benefits it offers to Panama. Paulownia has a complete growth cycle in 8-10 years reaching the size of native hardwoods in one third the time. Such a growth rate offers potential opportunities to eliminate the crisis of extreme poverty in the rural areas of the country.

Paulownia also offers nutritive value to local fauna and the top soil because its leaves have a 26% protein content and rapidly decompose. Unlike teak and other hardwoods, paulownia creates natural fire barriers during the dry season because its ignition point is 425 degrees centigrade four times that of boiling water.  

For more information on paulownia in Panama you may visit our web site www.paulownianow.org or for investment opportunities in managed paulownia forests of Panama www.panampro.com. You may also contact us via email at info@paulownianow.org  

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A Comparative Analysis of the Advantages of Growing Paulownia vs.Teak

Tags: paulownia, teak, Panama, reforestation, environment, ecology, Chain of Custody A few years ago teak was considered the panacea of solutions for socio economic problems in Panama. But, today, the harsh reality of growing teak is widely known. Recognized in many countries as a weed, Panama is one of the few nations in the world that gives tax incentives for planting Tectona Grandis, teak.

It is thoroughly understood that teak damages the environment. The fall of teak leaves is one of the principal causes of severe erosion and fire throughout the country. The high oil content of the tree and leaves is like tinder or kindling for fires during the dry season. When the leaves fall to the ground, they do not disintegrate rapidly and serve no useful function in the forest either as natural fertilizer or feed for animals.

Today there are huge forests of teak all over Panama.  Instead of contributing to the nation’s economy, they are actually depleting the national treasury through tax deductions provided to the wealthy.  Globally there are more offers to sell teak than to buy.

Many of these stands of teak are more than twenty years old. Why aren’t they being sold? There are two primary reasons: one the price of teak in Panama is not in synch with the realities of the price of teak on the world market and two, buyers today are more informed and are requesting documentation that most Panamanians cannot provide because they have not made the financial investment necessary for this type of venture, instead their interests have been to hide money from taxation. “Chain of Custody” documents are one of the key requirements for selling lumber in today’s world market. This documentation proves that the producer is not damaging the environment or jungle to extract lumber.

Today, there is a new alternative for agroindustry and multidimensional farming. This new paradigm of agroforestry allows for a mix of the traditional with the nontraditional generating more income for the farm and at the same time restoring the ecology of the nation. A study done by USAID/AED “A FINANCIAL ANALYSIS OF SUSTAINABLE CATTLE FARMING SYSTEMS IN THE WATERSHED OF THE PANAMA CANAL” dated June 2005 proves the economic viability of raising cattle with trees. Although the study mentions some species of trees, it does not mention species with high agricultural value. Selecting the correct species will not only serve as a source of income but also function as an integral and important part of the daily life of the farm.

Paulownia could be that species. Paulownia is recognized as the fastest growing tree in the world, the aluminum of hardwood trees. Grown for hundreds of years on the Pacific Rim, paulownia has a greater value than teak on the world market and offers the opportunity to have three harvests in the time it takes for teak to have one.

The paulownia leaves are used in many parts of the world has feed for animals because of its high nutritive value.

With the price of land in the clouds today, farms are smaller and farmers must maximize the economic utility of every hectare. Different than teak, after two years, the farmer can graze cattle between the paulownia trees without damaging them.

Paulownia increases the fertility of the land. The leaves disintegrate rapidly feeding the natural grasses which control erosion of top soil. Paulownia also functions as a natural firebreak. The ignition temperature of paulownia is approximately 425 degrees centigrade. Teak has a flash point of a little more than 100 degrees centigrade about that of boiling water.  

All of these elements combined: the world market price, world supply and demand, speed of growth, and a quick return on investment compared to teak, the nutritional value of paulownia as feed for animals, the benefit to top soil as a fertilizer and finally the ignition point of paulownia make paulownia an ideal addition to today’s  farms. For more information on paulownia or to buy seeds, seedlings or round poles you may visit our web site www.paulownianow.org or write us at info@paulownianow.org . If you are looking for investment opportunities in reforestation please visit www.panampro.com.  

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Women Farmers Toil to Expand Africa's Food Supply

By Megan Rowling Tags: Bill Gates Foundation, Africa, women farmers, irrigation, technology, U.N. World Food Programme, underserved peoples, education, FAO, fertilizer, paulownia, agroforestry

LONDON, Dec 26 - Like many African women, Mazoe Gondwe is her family's main food provider. Lately, she has struggled to farm her plot in Malawi due to unpredictable rains that are making her hard life even tougher.

"Now we can't just depend on rain-fed agriculture, so we plant two crops - one watered with rain and one that needs irrigating," she explained. "But irrigation is back-breaking and can take four hours a day."

Gondwe, flown by development agency ActionAid to U.N. climate change talks in Poland this month, said she wanted access to technology that would cut the time it takes to water her crops and till her farm garden. She would also be glad of help to improve storage facilities and seed varieties.

"As a local farmer, I know what I need and I know what works. I grew up in the area and I know how the system is changing," Gondwe said.

This year, agricultural experts have renewed calls for policy makers to pay more attention to small-scale women farmers such as Gondwe, who grow up to 80 percent of crops for food consumption in Africa.

After decades in the political wilderness, farming became a hot topic this year when international food prices hit record highs in June, sharply boosting hunger around the world. The proportion of development aid spent on agriculture has dropped to just 4 percent from a peak of 17 percent in 1982.

Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called for women to be at the heart of a "policy revolution" to boost small-scale farming in Africa.

Women have traditionally shouldered the burden of household food production both there and in Asia, while men tend to focus on growing cash crops or migrate to cities to find paid work.

Yet women own a tiny percentage of the world's land -- some experts say as little as 2 percent -- and receive only around 5 percent of farming information services and training.

"Today the African farmer is the only farmer who takes all the risks herself: no capital, no insurance, no price supports, and little help - if any - from governments. These women are tough and daring and resilient, but they need help," Annan told an October conference on fighting hunger.

A new toolkit explaining how to tackle gender issues in farming development projects, published by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), highlights the potential returns of improving women's access to technology, land and finance.

In Ghana, for example, if women and men had equal land rights and security of tenure, women's use of fertilizer and profits per hectare would nearly double.

In Burkina Faso, Kenya and Tanzania, giving women entrepreneurs the same inputs and education as men would boost business revenue by up to 20 percent. And in Ivory Coast, raising women's income by $10 brings improvements in children's health and nutrition that would require a $110 increase in men's income.

"The knowledge is there, the know-how is there, but the world -- and here I'm talking rich and poor -- doesn't apply it as much as it could," said Marcela Villarreal, director of FAO's gender, equity and rural employment division.

EQUALITY

Many African governments have introduced formal laws making women and men equal, but have troubling enforcing them where they clash with customary laws giving property ownership rights to men, she said.

Often if a woman's husband dies, she has little choice but to marry one of his relatives so she can keep farming her plot and feeding her children, Villarreal said. But if a widow is HIV positive, she might be chased off her land.

In Malawi, FAO is working with parliamentarians and village chiefs to let rural women know they are legally able to hold land titles. They are given wind-up radios so they can listen to farming shows in local languages and taught how to write a will.

"People continue to think that doing things for women is part of a welfare programme and doing things for men - big investments or credit - that is agriculture, that is GDP-related," Villarreal said.

"Women continue not to be seen as part of the productive potential of a country."

One powerful woman trying to change that is Agnes Kalibata, Rwanda's minister of state for agriculture. She said government land reform and credit programmes specifically target struggling women farmers - many of whom are bringing up children alone after their husbands were killed in the 1994 genocide.

This has helped raise their incomes, leading to better nutrition, health and education for their children, Kalibata said. Women are also getting micro-credit loans, which they use to access markets and cooperatives or set up small businesses, such as producing specialty coffee for export.

"They are not like rocket scientists, they are women from the general population who finally feel empowered that they can come out and do some of these things," explained Kalibata.

In the private sector, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have decided to put women at the centre of its agricultural development programme by attaching conditions to grants. It no longer finances projects that ignore gender issues, and it requires women to be involved in their design and implementation.

Catherine Bertini, a senior fellow at the foundation and professor of public administration at Syracuse University, said aid donors had not spent enough on support for women farmers.

"You can find the rhetoric but it's a limited number of people who actually walk the walk," she said.

Bertini, who headed the U.N. World Food Programme in the 1990s, said policy makers could best be persuaded to focus on women farmers by playing up the economic benefits rather than talking about gender equality.

"You convince people to do it because it's the most practical way to increase productivity and income to women," she said.

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Study: 49 States flunk college affordability

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Only California, with lower-cost community colleges, made the grade

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updated 12:11 a.m. CT, Wed., Dec. 3, 2008 An independent report on American higher education flunks all but one state when it comes to affordability — an embarrassing verdict that is unlikely to improve as the economy contracts. The biennial study by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, which evaluates how well higher education is serving the public, handed out "F"s for affordability to 49 states, up from 43 two years ago. Only California received a passing grade in the category, a "C," thanks to its relatively inexpensive community colleges. The report card uses a range of measurements to give states grades, from "A" to "F," on the performance of their public and private colleges. The affordability grade is based on how much of the average family's income it costs to go to college. Almost everywhere, that figure is up, according to the survey. Only two states — New York and Tennessee — have made even minimal improvements since 2000, but they're still considered to be failing.  Everywhere else, families must fork over a greater percentage of their income to pay for college. In Illinois, the average cost of attending a public four-year college has jumped from 19 percent of family's income in 1999-2000 to 35 percent in 2007-2008, and in Pennsylvania, from 29 percent to 41 percent.

Low-income hardest hit
Low-income families have been hardest hit. Nationally, enrollment at a local public college costs families in the top fifth of income just 9 percent of their earnings, while families from the bottom fifth pay 55 percent — up from 39 percent in 1999-2000.

And that's after accounting for financial aid, which is increasingly being used to lure high-achieving students who boost a school's reputation, but who don't need help to go to college.

The problem seems likely to worsen as the economy does, said Patrick Callan, the center's president.

Historically during downturns, "states make disproportionate cuts in higher education and, in return for the colleges taking them gracefully, allow them to raise tuition," Callan said. "If we handle this recession like we've handled others, we will see that this gets worse."

States fared modestly better in other categories such as participation, where no state failed and about half the states earned "A"s or "B"s — comparable to the report two years ago. One reason for the uptick is that more students are taking rigorous college-prep courses, the study found. In Texas, for instance, the percentage of high schoolers taking at least one upper-level science course has nearly tripled from 20 percent to 56 percent.

But better preparation for college hasn't translated into better enrollment or completion, with only two states — Arizona and Iowa — receiving an 'A' for participation in higher education.

Enrollment discrepancy
And the discrepancy in enrollment between states is still great: Forty-four percent of young Iowans are in college, while just 18 percent of their counterparts in Alaska — one of three states to get an "F" in the category — are enrolled.

For state-by-state details, click here

Callan said the United States is at best standing still while other countries pass it in areas like college enrollment and completion. And as higher education fails to keep up with population growth, the specter lurks of new generations less educated than their Baby Boomer predecessors.

"The educational strength of the American population is in the group that's about to retire," Callan said. "In the rest of the world it's the group that's gone to college since 1990."

© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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