AFBI appoints Agricarbon to undertake deep soil carbon stock assessment

Date published: 24 September 2025

The Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI), based in Northern Ireland, has appointed soil carbon measurement supplier Agricarbon as a delivery agent to support their ongoing research on farm soil carbon stock assessment.

This work represents an intrinsic part of the Soil Nutrient Health Scheme (SNHS) and will contribute to a better understanding of soil carbon stocks in NI’s farmland. 

Funded by Northern Ireland’s Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) and led by AFBI, SNHS aims to soil sample every active agricultural field in Northern Ireland and is one of the most comprehensive programmes in the world focusing on the measured nutrient status of soils. It enables farmers to optimise the application of crop nutrients to their soils to maximise yields and help increase farm profitability. 

Alongside this, the scheme aims to provide a baseline assessment of farm carbon stocks in soils and under hedgerows, contributing to the research which will support lower carbon farming practices in Northern Ireland. By understanding soil carbon stocks, and potentially the ability of NI’s soils to sequester carbon, the research will support NI in achieving its national climate targets such as reaching net-zero carbon by 2050.

Agricarbon will lead the deep soil carbon sampling, to one metre in depth, and subsequent analysis within the carbon research element of SNHS on approximately 250 field sites across Northern Ireland. Agricarbon’s expertise in soil carbon stock assessment is well-known in supporting farming practices which enhance soil health as well as soil carbon sequestration across the agricultural system.

Dr Selva Dhandapani, AFBI Carbon lead on SNHS said: “Working together with Agricarbon will enable the AFBI team to attain a detailed assessment of belowground carbon stocks in grasslands. Their work in this project will reveal the amount of carbon stored in different soil depths, which helps with our modelling work in estimating total carbon storage in all of Northern Ireland’s grasslands and in predicting ideal management strategies for maximising soil carbon storage in these grasslands.” 

Annie Leeson, CEO and Co-Founder of Agricarbon said: “This partnership marks a critical step in empowering farmers with data that both unlocks environmental gains and long-term sustainability. Redefining how soil health and carbon are measured across agricultural landscapes is a vital climate tool. We’re increasingly contributing our expertise to projects like these looking for robust carbon baselining that produces high-integrity soil data to help meet climate goals, in Europe and beyond.”

The deep soil carbon work that Agricarbon is conducting fills an important knowledge gap for farmers and policymakers in Northern Ireland. Sampling to a greater depth of one metre, combined with innovative laboratory analysis, will provide soil carbon data that would otherwise have been unaccounted for. This data will build an important picture to aid decision making on management practices for farms, and inform low carbon farming policies in NI, where agriculture remains one of the most defining features of rural identity and land use.

DAERA Minister Andrew Muir MLA recently announced that 18,600 farm businesses are already benefitting from taking part in the Scheme overall. The final datasets from Agricarbon’s deep soil carbon sampling work will be combined together with the wider carbon research work programme carried out by AFBI, arming researchers and educators with knowledge and vital insights to support the future resilience of the NI farming community and agri-food industry.

The work further builds on the foundations of the pioneering ArcZero NI project led by Professor John Gilliland, of which Agricarbon was a partner, which also measured soil carbon stocks across a network of predominantly grassland farms in NI. Its DAERA funded work found, for the first time, that farmers manage huge carbon stocks totalling tens of thousands of tonnes stored in soil, pasture, crops, trees and livestock, showing the significant capacity that agriculture has to capture, manage and store carbon. 

This latest investment by DAERA into the SNHS Scheme shows how valuable soil carbon stock assessments are proving to be in contributing to the knowledge bank needed for a successful transition to sustainable farming in the country.