How to Celebrate 25 years in a Soil Carbon Project - Part One (of Six) Technology Breakthrough

Why a 25-year Australian Carbon Credit Scheme (ACCU) soil carbon project is a very good thing for farmers … and the grains industry

I’ve reached that age!  I’m 58 and I’m on the count-down to my 25th silver wedding anniversary.  Twenty five good years with a fantastic woman that has stuck like glue through the thick and thin of life.  

 In my professional life, I spend a lot of time talking to farmers about the 25-year soil Australian Carbon Credit Unit (ACCU) scheme and I couldn't help but recognize the similarities between a commitment to a 25-year carbon project and a successful 25 years in a (mostly) harmonious and successful marriage.  They both represent a big important commitment, for all the right reasons.

 I recently read James Clear’s book ‘Atomic Habits’ that talks about focusing on small but regular incremental improvements in one's life that will inevitably lead to tangible rewards.  I think the same is very true of all our human relationships… with each other and importantly the world around us.  As landholders, the long-term relationship we have with the land, the soil we farm, our soil stewardship, this is never more so.  The ownership of land is really a custodianship agreement of a little slice of the Earth's surface we are given control over for a short while.  How that plays out over a lifetime across an entire industry is impactful, important…perhaps profound.

Soil carbon, the stuff that makes your soil fertile, underpins and is reflective of soil stewardship in cropping systems, the field where I have specifically spent my life's efforts, coincidently, for the past twenty-five years.

This is the context to which I approach a discussion of and advocacy for 25 year Australian Carbon Credit Unit (ACCU) Scheme soil carbon projects across our grain, fiber and meat producing industry.

 I will present the affirmative argument…

… ‘that there is only upside to building soil carbon and soil health over a 25 year period’.  

An ACCU generating soil carbon project empowers the landholder to establish a new and profitable enterprise on their farm by growing soil carbon credits for 25 years.  At the end of the project the soils will be in better shape to pass on to the next generation, supporting both profit and legacy.  

I could end this essay here, however for most there is obviously a lot more to unpack …or else most farmers across the industry would be running carbon projects already.

This is a new space in agriculture, and 25 years is a long time.  As it turns out, that is the whole point! 

So, let's get out the screwdrivers, spanners and socket set (we may even need an impact wrench and Oxy-Aset to address those welded on opinions) and pull this 25 year soil carbon project idea apart to highlight the very real and tangible benefits to a modern farm enterprise that an ACCU generating soil carbon project can deliver a landholder …and the grains industry into the future.

There are many 25 year and longer sign-up commitments that we just accept as part of life, such as bank loans and mortgages for houses and land, electricity, water and other farm infrastructure, superannuation payments, marriage and parenthood! 

I believe 25-year ACCU Scheme soil carbon projects will soon enough be regarded with the same level of acceptance.  Why? Simply because a 25-year soil carbon project can be absolutely the best thing to do for your family, your descendants and legacy, your business, your land and your industry, short, medium and long term. Period.

But first things first. 

Before we start a soil carbon project in a grain production business, there is one very, very important question a grower must first ask.

 ‘Can we actually build meaningful levels of soil carbon in an annual cropping system in the first place’?  Is there an effective soil carbon building tool in the agronomic toolbox?

The answer to this question becomes either a red light or green light to whether it is worth starting a 25 yearlong soil carbon project.

  So, can cropping soils build stable soil carbon or can they not?  This is where an effective soil carbon sequestration technology breakthrough literally changes everything.

The scientific literature tells us that building soil carbon in cropping systems has been challenging to say the least.  Globally we have lost around 60-80% of our soil organic carbon stocks in our annually cropped soils since industrial agriculture began.  Australia is no exception.  It's a slow and steady decline in soil carbon we hardly notice from year to year, but it adds up, and we end up with poorer soils.

Techniques that espouse being able to build carbon in cropping systems, may work in some instances however can often be unreliable, expensive or hard to adopt, or not suitable for all soil types and rainfall zones. It's not to say it can't be done, however in the past it has proven difficult, and any gains are usually very modest and often ephemeral and short lived i.e. lost back to the atmosphere relatively easily.

The market for carbon credits is looking to pay farmers for carbon that stays in the soil for decades and beyond.  Sequestering stable soil carbon is just so important. More on this latter. 

There has been a great need for an easy-to-adopt and economical solution to reliably build stable soil carbon in cropping soils...  a technology enabler.  

As it happens, I've been chasing this unicorn my entire career…and it has precipitated what I believe is a genuine game changer in the carbon space.

Enter stage left, Australian Biotech company Loam Bio.

Founded by a few Central West NSW farmers, a carbon specialist, an agronomist (myself) and some large-scale climate motivated investors, Loam Bio responded to this technology challenge and said (more or less, to use an Aussie colloquialism) … “Here, hold my beer, we think we may have a solution!”

This is where this particular technology breakthrough story starts.  

There is always an original ‘ah ha’ moment in any great discovery, and this story begins with a professor at Sydney Uni studying soil fungi, with a unique combined interest in mycology, soil carbon and climate change solutions, peering down a microscope with this confluence of context swirling in his mind.

 After 30+ years studying beneficial plant associated fungi and soil carbon, University of Sydney Associate Professor Peter McGee had a monumental ‘‘ah ah’ moment. 

Peter, and his then PhD student Tendo Mukasa Mugerwa, observed that certain very specialized plant- friendly fungi called Dark Septate Endophytes (DSE) were responsible for sequestering really large quantities of carbon around plant root systems, and had the epiphany that through very careful screening, testing and selection, that  a potent soil carbon fixing inoculum could be developed, suitable for annual crops.  

Applied to annual grain crops around the world, meaningful levels of soil carbon could be built, at once restoring soil health whilst also removing large quantities of heat trapping C02 from the overburdened atmosphere. Perhaps in the order of gigatonnes.

In 2011 Peter and Tendo set up a simple but elegant experiment to establish proof of concept.

 The grow chamber research revealed a massive 17% increase in soil carbon in 14 weeks using Denmark sub clover as the host plant for these selected Dark Septate Endophytic fungi.  I saw Peter present the raw research data at a Dubbo Carbon Conference in 2012 and I almost fell off my chair.  Nowhere had I seen such a massive increase in soil carbon in such a short time. They also had some early evidence that this ‘fungal carbon’ was more stable than normal soil carbon.  If this was even half true I thought, it could be a monumental game changer for agriculture.  For me it was a ‘carbon-gods-jamming-with angels-with-saxophones-hallelujah, take-me-to-carbon-church’ kind of moment!  I have been evangelistically captivated by the potential of this carbon sequestration technology ever since.

 I personally refer to it as agriculture's ‘penicillin moment’ and Peter McGee as the Alexander Fleming of soil carbon.

The work was peer reviewed and accepted for publication in 2015. https://www.publish.csiro.au/sr/sr16006

Above:  Carbon fixing fungal inoculum on a canola root.  The fungus helps the plant to grow, aggregate soil as well as sequester large quantities of stable soil carbon. 

On the back of this truly inspired and remarkable research, SoilCQuest 2031, a local Forbes charitable research institute was founded by myself and farmers Mick Wettenhall and Mark Shortis in 2015 to support the early field validation work.  Others soon joined the mission notably local Bogan Gate farmers Tegan Nock (also working with GRDC) and Frank Oly (also film maker), farmer and microbiologist Jeremy Bradley, soil carbon industry luminary Adrianna Marchand, Landcare coordinator Marg Applebee, Trent Thomson and many others all volunteering towards the project. Local farmers such as Steve Nicholson and Neil Westcott provided consistent and enthusiastic encouragement and support to the project.  We were all on a mission...to bring a new and important climate mitigation and soil health technology to the world

Through a stroke of lucky serendipity, in 2018 Englishman and global climate professional Guy Hudson, who had worked in the climate space with UN, World Bank and start-up investment, came on board to complete the skills matrix and the bio-tech company Loam Bio was born.   With some hard work and serendipity, $10 million of hard-won seed financing was secured from committed climate VC investors, (breaking some long-held startup funding records at the time).

 Loam Bio has over the past 6 years has been able to champion Peter and Tendo’s early research concept to develop and commercialize world-first carbon fixing fungal inoculums for broad acre crops. 

The fungal inoculum has been shown to reliably sequester quite breathtaking quantities of very stable soil carbon. Carbon build rates that have never before been achievable in annual cropping systems.  A genuine and demonstrative technology breakthrough that I believe can now place farmers in the driver's seat in the quickly evolving carbon economy. 

 Thanks to Loam Bio’s ever increasing and heavy-hitting financial and scientific investor support ($155 Mil and counting raised from global Venture Capital, Government and Industry such as CEFC, CSIRO, GRDC), serious large-scale scientific work has taken place in two hemispheres and 4 countries with tight collaboration between Loam and eight distinguished universities and scientific institutions. 

A genuine industry hat tip is appropriate to Loam Bio’s large and growing team of 70+ globally hand-picked industry leading scientists, involving some 30 PhD’s, that form Loam's powerhouse of innovation and scientific excellence. 

With farmer Tegan Nock at the helm as a truly extraordinary COO, and Guy Hudson's experienced hand as CEO, backed by amazing depth of internationally handpicked talent throughout the organization, the star is certainly rising for Loam Bio.

 It's certainly a technology of its time, just as the burgeoning carbon economy and mandatory emissions reporting come lumbering into farmer's view.  A technology that can truly put the power into the hands of farmers.

On the ground Loam's research has meant a massive metagenomics selection program followed by thousands of glass-house trials, 250+ small plot and field trials in Australia alone, and now increasingly over a wide international geography (Australia, USA, Canada and Brazil). 

 From my first early talks and research projects with Peter McGee at SoilCQuest, it has been over twelve years of hard sweat and grind by an ever-increasing team to get this breakthrough technology in the hands of farmers.  It's been, and continues to be, an honor to work with such great people and a truly amazing and remarkable ongoing journey!

 (see www.loambio.com & www.soilcquest.org.au )

The cropping industry now has access to Loam’s specialist high performing carbon fixing fungal inoculums for wheat, canola and barley (and soon pulses and more).

Loam Bio matter-of-factly named these crop specific carbon fixing inoculums ‘CarbonBuilder’. 

Above: Carbon fixing fungi emerging from a wheat root, exploring the soil for nutrients and depositing stable soil carbon. 

 Fundamentally CarbonBuilder comes to a farmer as a concentrated packet of dry fungi spores that a farmer adds in with their seed at sowing time at less than 50 gms/ha…and that's it s/he is set.  That farmer is then in the growing-soil-carbon game.  No change to current best farming practice is required.  No new rotations, no new implements.  Instant soil carbon …just add fungi!  This allows the farmer to just farm and simply plug-and-play the carbon sequestration technology into any existing best management farming systems. 

This is what truly excited me from the first moment I heard Peter talk - the elegant simplicity and hence adoptability of this truly powerful technology.

Take a moment to think about what this actually means for farmers, soil health and climate response around the world!

 Importantly, for this discussion on 25-year ACCU soil carbon projects, CarbonBuilder also underwrites the opportunity for landholders to take advantage of the emerging and potentially lucrative carbon credit (ACCU) market that has previously been elusive to the grains industry. 

The technology offers growers a green light into a new bankable virtuously stacked enterprise…a grain crop on top, a soil carbon crop below, each enterprise supporting and improving the other.  

 Mick Wettenhall SCQ Co-Founder & farmer, Associate Professor Peter  McGee Sydney University and Guy Webb Founder SoilCQuest and agronomist in 2013, discussing carbon sequestration using specialized DSE fungi. Source SoilCQuest 2031

Required Reading before Part 2: 

Clean Energy Regulator website;

https://cer.gov.au/document/understanding-your-soil-carbon-project-simple-method-guide)

Keep an eye out next week for Part Two of

‘How to Celebrate 25 years in a Soil Carbon Project’ 

Part 2 Soil.carbon.stability

 [sɔɪl] [ˈkɑːb(ə)n][stəˈbɪlɪti]

noun

the state of soil carbon being stable:

… …

For more information contact 

Guy R Webb 

guy@soilcquest.org.au