II felt like I was climbing a mountain during a temperature inversion. You're fighting through a fog so thick you can barely see where you're going. Suddenly you break through the top of the cloud and the world spreads out before you. It was a rare and wonderful thing: a eureka moment.
For the past three years I have been struggling with a big and annoying problem. In the study my book RegenesisI worked closely with Ian Tolhurst (Tolly), innovative farmer who did something extraordinary. Almost everywhere, high-yield farming causes serious damage to the environment due to the need for large amounts of fertilizers, pesticides and (sometimes) irrigation water and deep plowing. Most farms with apparently low environmental impact produce low yields. This is, in fact, means high impactsbecause more land is required to produce a given amount of food. But Tolley had found the Holy Grail of agriculture: high and growing yields with minimal harm to the environment.
It does not use any fertilizers, manure or pesticides. His methods, the result of decades of experimentation and observation, appear to enrich the critical relationships between crops and soil microbes through which soil nutrients must pass. It appears that Tolley has essentially “trained” his soil bacteria to release nutrients when his crops need them (a process called mineralization) and to lock them in when his crops aren't growing (immobilization), ensuring they don't wash out of the soil.
So why the disappointment? Well, Tolly has inspired many other growers to try the same methods. Some have succeeded and led to excellent results. Others didn't. And no one can understand why. This probably has something to do with the properties of the soil. But what?
Not for the first time, I came across a gap in knowledge so wide that humanity could fall through it. The soil is a fantastically complex biological structure, similar to a coral reef. built and maintained the creatures that inhabit it. He supplies 99% of our calories. However, we know less about it than about any other known ecosystem. It's almost a black box.
Many brilliant scientists have devoted their lives to its study. But there are serious obstacles. Most soil properties cannot be seen without digging, and if you dig a hole, you will damage the structures you are trying to examine. As a result, studying even basic properties is labor-intensive, time-consuming, and either very expensive or simply impossible on a large scale. For example, to measure the volume of soil in a field, you need to take hundreds of core samples. But since soil depth can vary greatly from one meter to the next, your numbers are based on extrapolation. This makes it very difficult to determine whether you are losing or gaining soil. Measuring bulk density (the amount of soil in a given volume, which measures how compacted it can be) or associated porosity (tiny catacombs created by life forms, a critical indicator of soil health) or soil carbon—at scale—is even more difficult.
So farmers have to figure it out. Partly because they can't see exactly what the soil needs, many of their inputs—fertilizer, irrigation, deep plowing—are wasted. Approximately two thirds the nitrogen fertilizers they applyAnd from 50% And 80% phosphorus is lost. These lost minerals cause algae blooms in rivers. dead zones at seacost for water users And global heating. Huge amounts of irrigation water are also wasted. Farmers sometimes “bury” their fields – deep and destructive plowing – because they suspect soil compaction. Suspicion often turns out to be wrong.
Our lack of knowledge also hinders the development of new agriculture that might, as Tolley did, allow farmers to replace chemical improvement with biological improvement.
So when I started writing the book, I made a statement so vague that it reads like an admission of defeat: We need to spend more on “advanced soil science” and use it to drive a “greener revolution.” Although we know almost nothing about the surface of our planet, billions of dollars are spent on Mars rover programexploring the barren regolith there. I argued that we need an Earth Rover program that maps the world. agricultural soils in much higher resolution.
I might as well have written: “We have to do something!” The necessary technology simply did not exist. I plunged into Stygian darkness.
AAt the same time, Tarje Nissen-Meyer, then professor of geophysics at Oxford University, was faced with another problem. Seismology is the study of waves passing through solid media. Thanks to the oil and gas industry's billions, it has become very complex. Tarje wanted to use this powerful tool for the opposite purpose – improving the environment. Together with his colleagues, he has already applied seismology to study the behavior of elephants in Kenya. Not only was it very effective, his team also found that it could identify animal species strolling through the savannah with his signature stride.
As luck would have it, we were both, in different ways, drawn to Wolfson College, Oxford, where we met in February 2022. I immediately saw that he was a thoughtful man – a visionary. I suggested a pint at the Magdalene Arms.
I explained my problem and we talked about the limitations of existing technologies. I asked if seismology is used to study soil. He had never heard of it. “I guess this isn’t the right technology?” No, he told me, “soil needs to be a good environment for seismology. In fact, we need to filter out the noise of the soil when we look at rocks.” – So, if it's noise, it could be a signal? “Definitely.”
We stared at each other. Time seemed to stand still. Could this really be true?
Over the next three days, Tarje conducted a literature search. Nothing appeared. I wrote to Professor Simon Jeffrey, outstanding soil scientist at Harper Adams University, whose advice I found invaluable while researching the book. I set up a Zoom call. He would probably explain that we were barking up the wrong tree.
Simon is usually a reserved person. But when he finished interrogating Tarje, he became quite animated. “All my life I wanted to look into the soil,” he said. “Maybe now we can.” I was introduced to a brilliant operations specialist, Katie Bradford, who helped us build the organization. We created a non-profit organization called Earth Rover Programdevelop what we call “postsmology”; create open source hardware and software that is cheap enough to benefit farmers around the world; and create a global self-improving database with farmers. We hope that one day this could cover every soil ecosystem: a kind of human genome project for soil.
Later we discovered that some scientists really tried apply seismology to soilbut it was not developed into a program, in part because the approaches used were not easily scalable.
My role was mainly to find money and other help. We received $4 million (£3 million) in seed capital from the Bezos Earth Fund. This may cause some discomfort, but our experience has been entirely positive: the fund has helped us do exactly what we want. We also received a lot of free help from the law firm Hogan Lovells.
Tarje, now at the University of Exeterand Simon began to assemble their teams. They will need to develop an ultra-high frequency version of seismology. The big obstacle was cost. In 2022, suitable sensors will cost $10,000 (£7,500) each. They managed to repurpose another set: Tarje discovered that the geophone developed by the Slovak experimental musical ensemble worked just as well and only cost $100. Now one of our scientists, Jiayao Mengis developing a sensor that costs about $10. Over time we will be able to use accelerometers in mobile phonesreducing the cost to zero. As for the generation of seismic waves, we get all the signal we need by hitting a small metal plate with a welder’s hammer.
On our first deployment, our team measured the volume peat bog, which scientists have studied for 50 years. After 45 minutes in the field, they gave a preliminary estimate that previous measurements were off by 20%. Instead of extrapolating peat depth from point samples, they could see the wavy line where the peat meets the soil. The implications for estimating carbon stocks are enormous.
We were also able measure bulk density on a very small scale; To monitor soil moisture (as part of a wider team); start creating the artificial intelligence and machine learning tools we need; and see the different impacts of different crops and treatments. Next we will work on measuring associated porosity, soil texture and soil carbon; scaling to the hectare level and above; and on testing the use of phones as seismometers. We now have additional funding from the UBS Optimus Foundation, centers on three continents and large international team.
We hope that over time, any farmer anywhere, rich or poor, will be able to almost instant reading from your soil. As more people use these tools to create a global database, we hope that this data will instantly turn into useful advice. These instruments should also revolutionize soil protection: EU released A soil monitoring law, but how to implement it? Farmers are paid for their contribution “to improving soil health and sustainability”, but in practice this means checking a box in the form of a subsidy: there is no reasonable way to test.
We are not replacing the great work of other soil scientists, but by developing our methods alongside theirs, we believe we can fill part of the huge knowledge gap. As one of the farmers we work with, Roddy Hallnotes the Earth Rover program can “take the guesswork out of farming.” One day, this could help everyone reach their happy point: high returns with minimal impact. Seismology promises to shake things up.
