EarthOptics has reportedly mapped and measured 1 million acres of farmland and ranchland with its soil mapping technology, helping farmers make data-driven decisions for carbon sequestration, fertilizer use, planting, and more.
The company has worked to scale its SoilMapper platform to advance regenerative agricultural practices while helping farmers reduce operational costs and benefit from nature-based carbon markets. EarthOptics has measured and mapped land in more than 45 U.S. states and four continents since 2021, taking about 10,000 physical soil measurements per day and mapping about 100,000 acres of land each month.
Through soil samples combined with the SoilMapper platform, the company has been training artificial intelligence to efficiently process soil attributes such as nutrient levels, ground compaction, carbon content, and moisture.
The data provides growers with insights into the physical composition of their soil and may offer guidance for fertilizer application, grazing plans, crop rotations, and opportunities for increasing carbon capture capacity. By feeding the EarthOptics machine learning system with verifications from physical samples, the company has reportedly reduced the number of physical samples taken by a factor of five.
EarthOptics claims that its growing portfolio of companies benefitting from the SoilMapper technology affirms a rising demand for soil intelligence in the agriculture industry.
As sustainability efforts and technological advances grow simultaneously, a number of green technologies, such as SoilMapper, have become more commonplace.
For example, Bayer and Iktos also recently partnered to develop various sustainable crop protection products, using data-based analysis to develop resource-efficient insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides. Additional mapping and AI-based tools have been developed by Bayer for use in assessing seed performance and water use, among other factors.
EarthOptics is one of many technologies specifically geared toward verifying carbon capture capacity of farming soil. In order for land owners to offer and sell carbon credits, the amount of carbon captured has to be verified–technologies such as SoilMapper may streamline this process and achieve accurate carbon measurements.
“EarthOptics has become a trusted partner for Grassroots Carbon,” said Brad Tipper, CEO of Grassroots Carbon. “Their expertise in rigorous deep soil sampling and best-in-class measurement protocols enables us to verify and certify high-quality soil carbon drawdown credits on behalf of our network of U.S. ranchers. Together with trusted partners like EarthOptics, we are helping reward ranchers for their regenerative soil health practices by generating measured and verified soil carbon credits that meet the rigorous requirements of our leading corporate carbon credit buyers.”
