Farmlab is working with the University of Queensland project on a $4m project funded by the Fed Govt (A/B Testing areas of carbon on farms)
Check out this brief intro video:
Our project is a part of the Federal Government’s National Soil Carbon Innovation Challenge. This aims at developing technologies that will lower the current costs of accurately baselining a farm’s soil carbon. The project aims to take soil samples from over 80 farms across South Australia to build up the data and knowledge to support this.
What’s in it for the farmer
We’ll be taking soil samples at 18 locations to both a 0-30cm and 30-60 cm depth. These 36 samples will be lab tested for Soil Organic Carbon % as well as Bulk Density. Ideally the area that we will be sampling will be between approximately 50-200 Ha in total
The project will cover all the costs of this soil sampling and lab testing. (This would typically cost between $5,000 and $7,000).
The results will be delivered back to landholders by the FarmLab platform, and they will get their soil carbon % and soil carbon stocks at both depths (Soil Carbon T/Ha).
In order to participate, landholders will be sharing the soil test results back with the Australian Govt, and there’s a Data Usage Agreement linked to the registration page
Farm types and locations
We are aiming to sample over 400 farms across the cropping and improved pasture zone of SA / WA / NSW / VIC / QLD and 30 farms across TAS
The program is seeking farms that have varied land management practices on the same farm, some examples of which may be:
– Cropping Vs Pasture
– Tilled in the past season Vs No tillage
– Set stocking rates Vs Time-controlled grazing
– Planted to wheat last season Vs Planted to canola last season
– Improved pasture Vs Native pasture
…and so on.
Such differences can make up the two separate sampling areas on the farm. We can work with your agronomists/farmers to finalise the most appropriate combination and to draw the boundaries to define the two sampling areas. Ideally each of these sampling areas will be between 25-100Ha so we aren’t stretching the physical soil sampling density too much
There’s a section in the form for landholders to flag up when they’d want sampling done during the year, and to also highlight their agronomist that they’d like to share their results with.