Soil Carbon-It all works hand-in-hand

Steve Nicholson’s farm ‘Eniver’ is located 30kms south of Forbes in Wirrinya, and is a classic mixed farm backed by a holistic soil carbon project.

The farm produces wheat, barley, canola, occasionally legumes, perennial pastures, runs a self-replacing Merino flock, and opportunistically runs cattle – across a mix of heavy black earth through to light red gravels.

“Soil carbon is why we wanted to finally go into a proper soil carbon project,” Steve said.

“We’ve been trying to build soil carbon here ever since we started farming basically 22 years ago, and we’ve been monitoring our organic carbon levels in our soils, basically every year since then. And we know that soil carbon is one of the keystones to increase productivity.

We decided to go with Loam mainly because it’s a whole package. It takes a lot of the guesswork out of our side of it so we can concentrate on running the farm rather than running the carbon project. I like that idea.”

Steve is partnering with Loam to manage Eniver’s soil carbon project, which will integrate Loam’s microbial technology to increase the amount of carbon being stored in Steve’s cropping soils. Working with Loam’s carbon agronomists and project delivery team has taken the guesswork out of running such as project, and allowed Steve to get back to the primary farming business.

“We can build soil carbon; we can build profitability and that’s the key. Like good soil carbon, healthy soils, and healthy bank accounts. So, it all works hand in hand.”