Intensive agriculture depletes the soil. At the Leibniz Institute for Agricultural Engineering in Potsdam-Bornim, scientists are researching how biocoal can be used as a sustainable fertilizer to improve the harvests in low-yield areas. The idea: when biogas is produced from corn or crop straw, fermentation residue remains. It is used to make biocoal that gives the soil important carbon. The chemical element is firmly bound in fertilizers and thus cannot enter the earth’s atmosphere in the form of greenhouse gases – a plus for the climate.