At S2G, we firmly believe that collaboration is an essential ingredient for building a healthy and environmentally responsible food system. A collaboration between our portfolio companies is a little icing on the cake, which is why we are thrilled to announce a partnership between Trace Genomics and EarthOptics to bring a new level of accuracy to carbon measurement.
Soil Carbon Accuracy
EarthOptics uses patent-pending field sensor technology, ground truth samples, and AI-powered analytics to deliver real-time soil data maps that include compaction, carbon, moisture, nutrients, and more. EarthOptics’ C-MAPPER software maps carbon concentration across a field using the sensor platform and a small number of soil samples. By utilizing C-MAPPER, farmers, carbon markets, and CPG companies have trusted accuracy in measuring, reporting, and verifying the amount of carbon stored in the soil.
Trace Genomics incorporates cutting-edge soil science, machine learning, and genomic sequencing technologies to provide farmers with a comprehensive soil diagnostic platform and help them make informed farm management decisions. The company’s product, TraceCARBON, helps farmers understand carbon stocks and how their soil sequesters carbon over time. The TraceCARBON offering includes an advanced high-accuracy soil carbon evaluation pipeline to measure total organic carbon, total inorganic carbon, bulk density of soil, and active carbon.
The new multiyear agreement between the two companies will combine the powerful soil carbon insight capabilities from both products to offer farmers and ranchers a research-grade version of C-MAPPER. This new offering combines Trace Genomics’ unmatched TraceCARBON data with EarthOptics’ sensor data to power enhanced carbon measurement and mapping for EarthOptics’ SoilMapper platform.
The Benefits of Verifiable Soil Analytics
Accurate, granular insight into soil carbon is crucial for a number of reasons. For farmers, it contributes to a comprehensive understanding of the health of their soils and enables them to optimize their agricultural practices to improve soil health. Soil health is essential for numerous farm outcomes, from improving yields to reducing pest pressures, minimizing the need for fertilizers and pesticides, enhancing resilience to drought and other natural disasters, and ensuring farm longevity. All of these factors can save money for farmers while improving farm sustainability.
Additionally, accurate and verifiable soil carbon measurement capabilities will be essential for farmers to participate in carbon markets at scale. These markets can reward farmers for sequestering carbon in their soils through sustainable practices. But carbon is notoriously difficult to track in dynamic agricultural environments, and precise measurements are necessary to ensure transparency and credibility within the carbon market system to give buyers the confidence that they are investing in legitimate carbon sequestration efforts. Similarly, accurate, real-time measurements can help farmers maximize their participation in carbon markets by enabling them to identify and implement the most effective carbon sequestration practices for their soils and climatic conditions.
Accessible, verifiable soil carbon data is also of interest to CPG companies that want to quantitatively demonstrate the sustainability of their products to meet evolving consumer demand. Accurate soil carbon measurements can provide the scientific data CPGs need to validate product claims such as sustainable, carbon-neutral, or regenerative. The technology can also assist CPGs in their general ESG reporting efforts by providing them with more accurate carbon accounting capabilities throughout their supply chain.
We look forward to seeing the impact that this collaboration will have on carbon measurement capabilities on the farm and throughout the broader agricultural supply chain. We will also continue working to facilitate the countless opportunities for partnerships between stakeholders in the food sector to accelerate the development of critical solutions.
