We are racing to remove CO 2 from our atmosphere. People are looking at the ground to try and draw down carbon. If we treat our land better, it could suck up even more carbon, as the top meter of the world's soil holds over three times the amount of carbon currently in our atmosphere.
Good news for farmers. Farmers willing to use sustainable agricultural practices and sequester carbon in their fields are willing to be paid to do so by companies and individuals desperate to offset their emissions by purchasing carbon credits. There is a problem. Physical samples have to be regularly collected across the land and sent to a lab for processing.
Perennial says it has the answer. While studying at Brown University, David Schurman met CEO Jack Roswell and president Oleksiy "Alex" Zhuk, both passionate engineers from family farms in Michigan and Ukraine. They were surprised to discover that agriculture as a whole was forgotten by technologists. The infrastructure that underpins the full vertical of the soil carbon market is their ambition today. Roswell says that no technology is going to solve a problem unless it costs less. Every field is being monitored for carbon removal and net emissions.
Jim Kellner is a professor at Brown University and Perennial's chief scientist. The reflected light from Earth is measured in narrow bands across a broad range of the electromagnetic spectrum to capture information that is invisible to the human eye. The spectrum of reflected light can be used to identify carbon in the soil. He says it's possible to identify materials even without a picture.
Satellite images are fed into a machine learning algorithm to calculate the carbon content of the soil. The team gathered thousands of soil samples, digging holes in fields across the US to calibrate their models for different climate conditions. The team was able to remotely quantify carbon in the ground with the help of their model. The company sees this as an important step in the market. If you want to reach global scale, you need to send someone into the field with a stake or shovel.
Do farmers really want to change how they grow food? The answer is yes, according to the man. He hopes Perennial will give farmers the financial boost they need to move away from damaging practices and return their land to its former glory. A farmer in Ethiopia who puts a ton of carbon in the soil will be paid the same as a farmer in Iowa if they put a ton of carbon in the soil around the world.
The company is working on training its programs in new countries and continents, as well as tackling new types of land, such as grazed and pasture lands. What is the goal of the person? To shift agriculture from just an industry that feeds us to an industry that is a major contributor to offsetting our emissions and reversing climate change
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