Natural capital: Economic incentives and science-based targets for integrated soil microbiome solutions in agriculture

The modern agricultural economy is fundamentally dependent on several conditions including the sustained services provided by the soil microbiome. However, the microbiome’s ecological worth has not been widely understood, valued, or protected in modern industrial practices. As such, human intervention and extractive agricultural practices have degraded over a third of the world’s fertile soils and continue to threaten the remaining stock.

To mitigate this growing threat to global food security and provide an environmentally sustainable path forward, it is crucial that:

1. Agricultural institutions understand the inherent economic and ecological value of the soil microbiome as an asset class.

2. Nature-Based Solutions that enhance the functions of the soil microbiome are established and well-publicised, allowing farmers to avoid management practices that harm the microbiome and embrace beneficial solutions that generate restorative practices.

3. Frameworks for microbial monitoring are increasingly available which enable the implementation of Science-Based Targets specifically oriented for the soil microbiome.

4. Businesses recognize the potential for integrated microbiome solutions that utilize network science to create dynamic soil health signatures and facilitate precision microbiome management.

5. Financial players understand the value of science-based microbial signatures that are predictive of ecosystem services and create value-based approaches and financial incentives to drive regenerative agriculture and biodiversity conservation, carbon sequestration and resilience.

The advances in understanding the networks of microbes and their relationships with ecosystem are gaining pace. Work linking patterns in these networks to predictive signatures opens the way for a new approach to valuation and conservation of land and regenerative practices in agricultural settings. However, this is a complex field and conventional science struggles to make meaningful connections that can be correlated and have potential to be scaled.

The usage of data science in agriculture is rapidly growing across the industry, presenting a valuable opportunity for the integration of microbial data into these more conventional systems. It is essential that businesses recognize the financial materiality of the soil microbiome and the potential for integrated microbiome solutions that harness the microbiome’s intrinsic agricultural benefits. In time, it is anticipated that an understanding of the live and dynamic nature of the soil will give way to asset classes that include soils to conserve biodiversity, soils to retain water, soils that are agriculturally productive and soils that can be termed 'Carbon Sinks' to complement the existing classes of land such as farmland and real estate.

Adopting solutions that focus on the soil microbiome's health aligns with the rising global demand for sustainable and regenerative agricultural practices. Moreover, it challenges current strategies for carbon sequestration to align themselves with quantifiable science-based indicators, reaffirming that carbon is being effectively stored. This report highlights the financial incentives and environmental benefits of some of these solutions, while providing a foundational overview of the necessary components for integrated microbiome solutions. However, further research and field studies will be necessary to fully materialize these solutions and further testing to predict the outcomes at a level of scale.

Read the paper here.