Introduction
The Australian government and authorities have been putting a lot of effort into developing a fair and trustworthy C02 emission management plan in the food production chain.
Hence, many companies aim at dealing with farmers and agri-food companies to develop carbon projects in the Aussieland and its surroundings.
InCarb is one of them, working as a trusted management entity for several carbon-related activities for small landowners and big corporations. They account for all the data in different registries to help producers get on track with net-zero goals and significantly impact rural communities’ livelihood.
To comply with AUS regulations about climate change and C02 emissions, all the players in the food production chain found themselves in a difficult position, not disponing the right tools to measure their agricultural footprint.
InCarb needed to measure how soil carbon dynamics changed throughout the years and how the farming management practices affected the total amount of carbon stored.
Hence, we, SmartCloudFarming, provided on-demand satellite images, and we used our deep neural networks to assist farmers with 3D soil maps about soil carbon quality. Farmers had all the vital information to manage their lands cost-effectively and comply with carbon credits regulations.
The Challenge
Small and big farm holders approached InCarb to cover massive land extensions, even though the small carbon company didn’t have the right tools to make the estimates solely relying on manual sampling.
For significant extensions, this method proved its inefficacy for different reasons.
First and foremost, it is costly since it requires human resources to go in-situ and collect the samples leading to biases since the sampling points may not represent how carbon is trapped and distributed.
Secondly, it is a snapshot frozen in time. Far away from a real-time report, and by the time the information is fully compiled, it can become obsolete.
We might say that this approach gives a high-level understanding of the area, but it is not enough to help farmers fight climate change and become carbon-free.
The Solution
InCarb teamed up with SmartCloud Farming to develop a proper soil campaign using remote sensing and on-demand satellite imagery on the Gondwana Rainforest.
With our deep neural network, we managed to assist farmers and fine-tune their decision-making plan, having a real-time topsoil mapping proficient enough to allow a better understanding of carbon dynamics and agricultural operations’ effectiveness.
The Results
Thanks to this fruitful cooperation, InCarb achieved its goal to map all the areas in the Gondwana Rainforest where most of its clients had huge farms.
We studied and gained vital insights into a 1,000x times bigger area than the original one with our deep neural network, only using 20% of soil samples collected manually.
It was a fantastic result for InCarb, leading to new farmers and hectares under its wings.
Periodically, all the area was assessed using remote sensing and provided a better real-time tracking of the soil dynamics for a fraction of the previous cost.
The company also accessed information about biodiversity and soil texture characteristics, which proved extremely helpful to manage SOC in a better fashion.
“The level of data, precision, and extension we now handle would have been impossible through traditional methods. We are grateful to SmartCloudFarming and wish them all the best in their mission to map the world’s soils. ” – [J.P.] InLab CEO.
Begin your journey towards net-zero with us using an accurate, reliable and scalable approach. Let’s talk!
