Soil Health V3

Owned by Lite Farm
Last updated: Mar 28, 2024
4 min read

Purpose

To be able to use the combined data available about land use, crop cultivation, inputs and soil health (from Soil Health V1 and Soil Health V2) to be able to estimate greenhouse gas emissions at the farm level.

Stakeholders

  • Hannah Wittman

  • Sean Smukler

  • Khanh Dao Duc

Grants involved

  • ScotiaBank

  • RBC

  • OSC4

  • Hannah’s new new frontiers

Release window

FY2026

Scope

Epic

User story

Additional context

Epic

User story

Additional context

Augment the data model and UI to support any gaps in the necessary inputs for generating a HOLOS output

 

 

Build HOLOS model

As a FO / FM I want to be able to generate an estimate of my green house gas emissions (GHG) and changes in soil carbon (IC) so that I can understand the sustainability of my farm

HOLOS is primarily a Canadian research tool. The current vision is that we would code the HOLOS model into LiteFarm and that it would be the lowest barrier, back of the envelop choice for understanding on farm GHG and IC.

Augment the data model and UI to support any gaps in the necessary inputs for generating a COMET-Farm output

 

 

Integrate with COMET-Farm

 

 

Augment the data model and UI to support any gaps in the necessary inputs for generating a CFT output

 

 

Integrate with Cool Farm Tool

 

 

Things to be investigated

Question

Answer

Notes

Question

Answer

Notes

Which of our users will benefit most greatly from generating GHG estimations for their farms?

 

This can be an input into which tools we support / integrate with.

Should we be charging for the ability to generate GHG emissions if a farmer will realize a monetary benefit from doing so?

 

We would probably need to provide a seamless service where the user just agreed to pushing the data and we would handle the remainder of the transaction and take a cut.

Alternatively, we could just inform farmers of programs in the regions that would pay them for their reports. In this case we could build a “Tip LiteFarm” link for them to share the wealth.

Which of these tools should we use to estimate on farm GHG emission estimates?

 

Each has a geographic footprint:

  • HOLOS → Canada

  • COMET → Mostly USA

  • CFT → Mostly Europe

So the answer may be more than one.

Does it make more sense to build and maintain a Switchboard connector to integrate with COMET farm tool and Cool Farm Tool or to create direct integrations?

 

 

Additional resources

The team has performed a thorough analysis of the three leading GHG accounting tools on the market – HOLOS, COMET-Farm, and Cool Farm Tool: 

  • HOLOS: The HOLOS tool is a GHG calculator built by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. It is the primary GHG modelling tool used for research in Canada. It is not offered as a service, but the methodology is open access. The LiteFarm team has secured documents describing the models used in version 1 of the application, and in partnership with researchers at UBC will re-create these models within LiteFarm. The team estimates this will take fewer than 100 hours of engineering effort, though additional data and user interfaces to support this functionality could take longer.  

  • COMET-Farm: The COMET-Farm tool was created by Colorado State University and funded by the USDA. It is primarily used in the United States. It is available via application programming interface (API) and is free to use. However, documentation is sparse and the service is somewhat unreliable. The LiteFarm team is currently building a proof-of-concept integration with COMET-Farm and will have more information about levels of effort to create a production-ready integration with the LiteFarm platform in the coming months.   

  • Cool Farm Tool: The Cool Farm Tool was created by the Cool Farm Alliance, a large alliance of primarily European agribusiness and food and beverage companies. The tool is used by individual farms and enterprises primarily in the EU to estimate GHG emissions, water use, and biodiversity. It has the most robust documentation and API and will require the least effort to programmatically communicate with. However, Cool Farm Tool has a cost structure that is challenging for LiteFarm to integrate with without passing along the cost to our users. We are working with the Cool Farm Tool team to create a mutually agreeable solution to this barrier.  

 

The current vision for LiteFarm users is that the HOLOS inspired code will be available in-app and will continually re-evaluate GHG emissions as users enter relevant data into the system. COMET-Farm and Cool Farm Tool are both available through APIs that allow management practice data to be sent over the internet and GHG estimates to be returned. Users will be able to request GHG estimates from these services directly in LiteFarm and the generated reports will be pushed via notification once prepared. Our intent is to provide these reports to users free of charge, but that may not be possible depending on pricing conversations with the Cool Farm Tool team.  

 

Tools to investigate (non-exhaustive)

 

Other resources

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012825223001514?via%3Dihub