EOSDA Helps AgriProve Enhance Soil Carbon Monitoring

Overview: About AgriProve

AgriProve is Australia’s leading soiltech carbon developer with a focus on enabling and facilitating agricultural carbon sequestration through soil. Aimed at transforming agricultural practices to enhance soil health, AgriProve oversees more than 700 projects covering over 175,000 hectares. This scale makes it the fastest-growing developer in this field within Australia which manages over 70 percent of all soil carbon projects successfully registered in the Australian Carbon Credit Unit (ACCU) Scheme.

The company’s operations are centered around the use of cutting-edge technology and data analytics to help farmers improve soil health and facilitate the generation of soil carbon credits under the Australian government’s carbon farming initiatives. Through their efforts, AgriProve not only addresses agricultural productivity but also contributes significantly to environmental sustainability by promoting practices that sequester carbon and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

AgriProve’s pioneering approach in leveraging data analysis and technological tools aligns with its mission to advance regenerative agricultural practices, thus making a substantial impact on both the ecosystem and the economic viability of farming in Australia. Through their pioneering projects, they exemplify how targeted interventions and strategic use of data can lead to measurable enhancements in soil health and carbon sequestration.

Challenges: Establishing Baseline Carbon Benchmarks, Enhancing Project Compliance, Reducing Verification Costs

When an Australian farmer wants to start measuring carbon in their soil, they need to register a carbon farming project within a Clean Energy Regulator. For that, farmers must report what happened to their land in the past and how it responds to regenerative land management practices. A five-year retrospective baseline carbon benchmark is also necessary for the integrity and validation of soil carbon sequestration efforts, which will require repeat benchmarking throughout the 25-year+ project lifecycle should the project be successfully registered.

Taking on the facilitation role between farmers and the Clean Energy Regulator, AgriProve faced the challenge of establishing a five-year retrospective baseline carbon benchmark to secure the registration of their projects. Detailed data collection for the report was also proving to be both time-consuming and technologically demanding.

In addition to setting up baseline benchmarks, AgriProve needs to ensure continuous compliance with regulatory frameworks over the 25-year lifecycle of their projects. This ongoing compliance is essential not only for the validity of the carbon credits generated but also for maintaining the trust and cooperation of the farmers involved. The need to track and report changes in soil health accurately requires robust analytical capabilities and frequent benchmarking, which poses operational challenges.

Another major hurdle is the cost associated with verifying the soil carbon improvements. Physical sampling and data verification are traditionally expensive and logistically challenging, which can make the projects less viable for farmers. AgriProve was looking for ways to reduce these costs significantly by utilizing technology to streamline verification processes.

Innovative use of remote sensing would help minimize the need for physical sampling, thus making it more affordable for farmers to participate in and benefit from the carbon credit system.

Solutions: Leveraging EOSDA Crop Monitoring, Advancing Verification Technologies, Enhancing Data-Driven Insights

Since 2021, EOS Data Analytics has been instrumental in addressing AgriProve’s challenges through its advanced satellite imagery analytics within EOSDA Crop Monitoring, an online satellite-based precision agriculture platform for field monitoring. This platform has enabled AgriProve to establish accurate baseline carbon benchmarks by providing historical data and analytics capabilities. The EOSDA Crop Monitoring platform facilitates the tracking and benchmarking of soil organic carbon, allowing for effective measurement of changes due to various land management practices over time.

To address the challenges of project compliance and ongoing verification costs, since 2022, EOS Data Analytics, in collaboration with AgriProve, has been working on innovative verification technologies as part of the National Soil Carbon Innovation Challenge. This initiative aims to use synthetic aperture radar and optical technologies to improve the measurement and storage of soil carbon, significantly reducing the need for expensive and labor-intensive physical sampling.

AgriProve set out to find the best partner to support us on this groundbreaking project and we are delighted to have the support of EOS Data Analytics. This is an approach which will enable us to achieve unprecedented accuracy in measuring soil carbon content remotely and unlock tangible steps our partnering farmers can take to build healthier soil while also addressing climate change and enhancing the climate resilience and productivity of their land.

Matthew Warnken

Founder and Managing Director of AgriProve

Moreover, EOSDA’s solutions hosted on AWS, including the use of AWS Lambda and Amazon S3, have greatly enhanced AgriProve’s ability to manage data-intensive processes efficiently. This robust infrastructure supports the quick processing and storage of large datasets, which is crucial for ongoing monitoring and compliance across the 25-year lifecycle of carbon soil projects. By utilizing these advanced technologies, EOSDA has supported AgriProve in its agile and data-driven approach, enhancing the accuracy of its lead indicators to facilitate increased adoption of regenerative agricultural practices and access to the ACCU Scheme.

Outcomes: Enhanced Data Accuracy, Increased Project Viability, Reduced Verification Costs

Through the partnership with EOS Data Analytics, AgriProve has significantly enhanced the accuracy of data regarding predicted soil carbon levels. By utilizing EOSDA Crop Monitoring and AgriProve’s vast number of physical soil samples, AgriProve has been able to create reliable baseline reports and effectively track changes in soil organic carbon resulting from various land management practices. This high level of data accuracy is crucial for both the validation of carbon credits and for providing actionable insights to farmers.

The increased accuracy and efficiency provided by EOSDA have also made soil carbon projects more viable by streamlining the project onboarding process and reducing the time required from months to weeks. This improvement not only accelerates the registration process under the ACCU Scheme but also allows farmers to quickly implement beneficial practices and start seeing the environmental and economic benefits sooner.

We are proud to be able to use AgriProve’s strategic alliance with EOS Data Analytics to further enhance the regenerative agriculture ambition of our partnering farmers. AgriProve’s ongoing investments in innovation are unlocking the data-driven models we need right now to help address the significant ecological, agricultural, and sustainability challenges we all face, both locally and globally. We look forward to analyzing around 500,000 ha of soils by mid-next year with EOSDA, which represents a major uplift in our current monitoring capacity.

Matthew Warnken

Founder and Managing Director of AgriProve

In the future, the collaboration between EOSDA and AgriProve under the Australian government’s National Soil Carbon Innovation Challenge is expected to lower the costs associated with the verification of soil carbon improvements, making carbon farming more accessible and financially feasible for a broader range of farmers. These cost reductions help enhance the overall sustainability and expansion of soil carbon projects, contributing to the environmental goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving soil health.