Introduction
Cornora is a well-known farm in Iowa, USA, and manages over 25,000 acres in the corn belt. Sustainability is everything, and it’s at the core of their corporate values. Lately, they have been working to achieve negative carbon emissions status, but the mission was starting to fail. Using methods like soil sampling and other GHG emissions testing methods to cover more than 25,000 acres represented an immense cost that could turn the entire operations unviable. Let alone the risks of having the farmers or human operators input the data, which leads directly to errors and biases. After working with us, they had a 3D soil map of their entire property in under a day with analytics as reliable as a lab study. They reduced their soil carbon measurements cost while reaching negative carbon status in less than six months by building a plan based on our soil mapping.
The Client
Cornora is a third-generation company specializing in producing corn in Iowa, USA.
They own more than 25,000 acres of productive land, and they have supplied primary Food & Beverages multinationals since 1981. They have always relied on the latest available technologies to stay as efficient as possible while increasing their corporate sustainability.
The Challenge
The main issue to stay competitive was that Cornora’s buyers (world-leading companies with tight sustainability agendas) requested their soil measurements. Measuring the current status of the entirety of their land was highly costly and not accurate at all. Sampling different points did not account for the spatial distribution of the real property, and the information was manually input by the farmers or operators. And this situation started to become a problem if they wanted to maintain their customers.
The Solution
SmartCloudFarming did a 3D remote sensing soil mapping of organic carbon, carbon stock, biodiversity, and soil moisture through a satellite image processing topped with an advanced deep learning proprietary technology. It allowed them to get a lab-study accurate mapping live status of the entire property (25,000 acres) in less than a week.
The Results
The mapping showed high inaccuracies compared to the previous testing methods. This allowed Cornora to rearrange the land’s usage to take advantage of the best sectors while having consistent information to provide its customers.
“Some areas we believed were optimum based on old sampling methods were quite the opposite. We have a true vision of the real status, and we made that work into our first carbon-negative year of production. It could not have been done without SmartCloudFarming” – [J.D.].
Negative Emissions Farming Is Now Possible. Let’s Talk!
Contact our representatives and set your business on the negative emissions path as Cornora did.
