As one of the largest terrestrial carbon sinks in the world, soil presents a unique opportunity in our fight against climate change. What’s often debated is what control we have over it.

AgriProve Founder and Managing Director, Matthew Warnken believes, “The one thing all scientists agree on, is that bad management practices strip carbon out of soil.

“So, what if good management practices can reverse that? And instead of stripping carbon out of the soils, strip carbon out of the atmosphere and store it into the soils where it's a fundamental agricultural asset.”

As one of Australia’s leading soil carbon project developers, AgriProve is set to prove this by de-risking soil as a viable asset class and accelerating the commercial deployment of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) – tipped to reach a trillion dollars globally by 2050.

To achieve its mission AgriProve is seeking more than A$30 million Series B investment from strategically aligned investors to drive its organisational capacity, digitise and scale verified soil carbon profiling and spearhead its delivery and global expansion.

Interested in AgriProve’s Series B investment opportunity? Expressions of Interest close Tuesday 31 October 2023. Visit grow^AG. here.^

Geared to improve soil health and soil carbon sampling, AgriProve's system uses one-metre soil sample cores in conjunction with Near-Infrared (NIR) spectroscopy soil scanning, and next generation remote sensing inputs including Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) in addition to spectral and hyperspectral satellite imagery to predict, measure and validate.  
 
“With the Series B investment, we aim to scale our boots-enabled soil tech platform to index the full suite of soil properties, and measure against soil carbon, and a whole raft of other analytes, to then develop customised management algorithms to optimise for overall landscape function,” said Matthew.   

AgriProve’s multi-dimensional approach serves to close the knowledge gaps in soil carbon, and prove up agricultural soil’s capacity to sequester carbon at scale and speed.  
 
This has become a hot button issue, Matthew explained, “shrouded in controversy – despite an emerging wealth of scientific knowledge in the soil microbial space and significant gains in Australia’s soil carbon methodologies, considered world’s best practice.”   
 
“Part of the controversy and uncertainty around soil and the credibility of carbon credits has relied on peer reviewed science predominately dated more than 10 years old with a shallow number of reference sites, and conclusions driven from less than 100 reference locations in Australia.” 
 
“The problem with relying on peer reviewed science that’s dated in such an emerging and rapidly developing biological field, is kind of like reviewing articles from 2005 about electric vehicle range.”  
 
Since launch in 2018, AgriProve has been accumulating data and committed to improving national soil health with 550 farmers now engaged in Clean Energy Regulator (CER) registered soil carbon projects, representing one third of all types of carbon projects in Australia, and 33 soil carbon projects with validated measured increases.  

The Albury, NSW, based company is confident in reaching its goal: 10 million hectares, 25 million tonnes of sequestered carbon annually by 2030, and 10,000 AgriProve reference locations.  
 
Matthew believes 100,000 national reference sites with yearly measurements will be necessary, “to safely conclude what we can and can’t do with Australian soils”. 
 
“De-risking soil carbon is a numbers game. It requires more projects, more proof points, and evidence-based confidence in terms of measurement, management, impact on the landscape function, and confidence in the end-market to underwrite the whole project proposition and then accelerate that investment to access institutional finance, not unlike the renewables sector.”  
 
“With approximately 65 million hectares of grazing and crop lands (excluding rangelands), Australian soils could potentially deliver 100 million tonnes of carbon drawdown per year, equivalent to $10 billion annually by 2030, based on AgriProve’s calculations using an implied carbon price of $100 per tonne.”  

To realise the immense potential of agricultural soils and the delivery of commercially viable CDR using soils, AgriProve has identified six adoption barriers: 
 
1. Soil sampling expenses 
2. High compliance costs  
3. Complex administrative processes 
4. Evidence-based soil management understanding, still in development 
5. Customised on-farm data-driven algorithms, still in development  
6. Associated co-benefits remain theoretical, without measurement  
 
AgriProve’s business model is designed to overcome these barriers by simplifying participation in soil carbon projects by reducing upfront costs and risk, through the option of a deferred payment, repaid through carbon credit generation – by splitting the credits not the revenue from credits. This covers baseline soil sampling, administration, or audit costs for the lifetime of the project, and subsequent soil sampling rounds. 
 
Founded on a commercial incentive to unlock additional farmgate value, AgriProve is forging equitable partnerships and engagement with producers and growers, which lays the groundwork for more data, greater access to institutional finance and the future development of an ecosystem’s services wallet.  
 
“We are confident we strike the right balance in terms of a fair deal with no hidden gotchas that enables us to accelerate the speed and scale in terms of our farmer engagement and the adoption rate.”  

Learn more about AgriProve’s Series B investment opportunity here.^

In just three years, AgriProve has grown from a team of three to 33, developed its proprietary digital soil organic carbon model, and launched its next-gen soil measurement trailer, autonomous vehicle and UAV rover at evoke^AG. 2023 in Adelaide. 
 
Collaborating with research partners, such as Meat & Livestock Australia, RMIT University, the Grantham Foundation, Earth Observing Systems Data Analytics, Hone Carbon, with Federal Government grant funding and participation in the National Soil Innovation Challenge, is helping fuel AgriProve’s capabilities.  
 
“For us to continue that growth we need that organisational capacity, scale and maturity, which will be one of the biggest strengths an investor can bring to help direct our strategic growth and development.”    
 
Given the urgency of the climate crisis, Matthew concluded, “We need to accelerate far beyond the status quo, and find disruptive pathways to achieve fast and scalable solutions. It’s absolutely necessary and a fundamental challenge for our global economy and civil society.”  

Learn more about AgriProve’s Series B investment opportunity here.^