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in priming the research through its SMART- farmer to get paid immediately. Modest emis-
FARM program, which is focused on measuring sions reductions of 30% to 60% with a carbon
the carbon intensity of feedstocks for biofuels price of $60 to $140 a ton would translate into a
production. The goal is help biofuel crop pro- price for nitrous oxide of $20 to $140 an acre.
ducers profit as soon as possible from adopting
practices that reduce GHG emissions and cap- The technologies and practices used to address
ture and store more carbon in their soils. the California fuel market can in turn help
farmers across the country. “If we can leverage
Under California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard, that existing carbon market to develop all these
biofuels with lower carbon intensity generate technologies, there’s no reason why they couldn’t
credits that can be sold to fuel producers that be applied to any other type of ag system,”
need them to comply with the standard. Mean- Babson said.
while, the National Corn Growers Association’s
No. 1 legislative priority is a bill called the Next To that end, ARPA-E is funding the develop-
Generation Fuels Act that would set a carbon ment of low-cost sensors and systems to measure
emission limit on gasoline. farm-level carbon intensity.

The effective price on carbon in California now Among $16.5 million awarded in grants in Sep-
is about $200 a ton, the highest carbon market tember, the Soil Health Institute just received
price in the world, and that could provide a $3.25 million for a soil carbon measurement
substantial incentive for farmers even if it costs and monitoring system using sensors called the
them $50 an acre to reduce emissions, Babson DeepC System.
said. Farmers could start realizing the bene- Soil carbon sensors “will be a paradigm shift in
fits just by reducing losses from their fields of
nitrous oxide, which has nearly 300 times the terms of how we can do those measurements,”
warming potential of carbon dioxide. Babson said, by reducing the costs significantly
and allowing soil carbon testing to be performed
by third parties.

Current methods to measure
We .need .to .have .the .tools . carbon are expensive for mon-
to .be .able .to .measure . itoring soil carbon at scale, and
the .carbon .harvest .as . fields are variable, says SHI
accurately .as .we .measure, . Chief Scientific Officer Cris-

you .know, .a .corn .harvest . tine Morgan. “You can walk
a couple feet, 100 feet, or 10
—David Babson, .ARPA-E feet, and you have a different
amount of carbon,” she says.
“Sending off one soil core to the
“The cool thing about the low carbon fuel lab is no big deal but sending off a wheelbarrow
standard is that you get paid on the emissions of soil to the lab is a big deal.”
reductions relative to the petroleum baseline,
so you don’t even need to sequester the carbon A private research firm, Dagan Inc., received a
underground in a lot of cases,” Babson says. $1.8 million grant in the same round of funding to
build, validate, and demonstrate an integrated sys-
Employing a nitrogen use efficiency strategy tem for reliable and cost-effective measurement of
that cuts nitrous oxide emissions would allow a field-level soil carbon and nitrous oxide emissions.

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