App captures soil data

Like many intergenerational landowners, Abby Rose and her family were seeking a simple way to collect and monitor soil data on their family vineyard in Chile. The result was smartphone app, Soilmentor. Initially developed in 2015 as an app for measuring trees, and rebranded in 2020 as Soilmentor, Soilmentor starts with mapping your boundaries so your soil samples can have a GPS location.

Over time you can begin to collect and track 10 different indicators of soil health on a dashboard and see how your soil performs against benchmarks of other farms in the same type of area – temperature, rainfall, soil types and so forth. Indicators you can collect data on include; earthworms, soil insect score, rooting depth, nodulation of legumes, and Brix barometer, among others.

The Carbon Stocks Report allows you to view the carbon stocks stored in the top 30 cm of your soil, as carbon is quite changeable in the top 10 cm. To record you will need a lab analysis of your soil sample from your site’s soil organic carbon percentage and the bulk density (g/cm3) for Soilmentor to calculate your carbon stocks. The Field Report makes it easy to bring your results together, annotate them and share as a pdf with consultants and other external programmes.

The key time to do the soil pit tests are Spring and Autumn where you would record a visual evaluation of soil structure, including topsoil depth and infiltration test (that indicates compaction) and take photos to monitor improvements over time. You can add in lab soil sample data as well as pasture tests from sword or plate metre, through to herbage tests into the app.

This allows you to build up a history and see trends over time with management changes. By monitoring and analysing patterns over time you can easily share the platform with your team or wider assurance programme to prove your soil health. Programmes such as Silver Fern Farms’ partnership with Savory Institute or NZ Merino’s ZQRX will require this level of record keeping as proof to the consumer of your soil improvement over time.

Here in New Zealand, Quorum Sense are currently running a programme called Catch the Rain, using a customised version of Soilmentor to support the farmers in the programme monitoring the behaviour of water on their land. For more information and to download the app visit soils.vidacycle.com