Not sure why you call woo woo on what appears to be a practical and promising method to both sequester CO2 and improve soil quality, and all this using a relatively low-tech and cheap technology with material that is already lying around the surface in abundance (crop residues). Nerds need not despair either since one can both just burn collected stalks and husks in a controlled way by piling, incinerating and quenching stuff in a controlled right on the land, or else do the same in a more closely controlled way monitoring temperatures and chemical processes. There's stuff to do for both the bottom-uppers and the top-downers here!