Dr. Gary Lanigan:

The carbon content does not necessarily need to be measured on every farm if we have a good enough soil map. The elements that vary soil carbon are the soil type, especially the texture, the management and then the climate. If we have a good handle on the range of carbon content and the relationship between carbon content and soil type and carbon content and management, we can model the carbon content for each individual farm. We do not necessarily have to measure it. We have to measure enough soils so we can do the modelling in a robust enough manner but after that we can model it. We have fairly complex process-based biogeochemical models that basically mathematically simulate carbon and nitrogen cycling in soils. Therefore, we can simulate that relatively robustly, but it takes a lot of input data. We do not necessarily have to measure the carbon content on every farm. It would be ideal if we could but if we have enough samples we can model it. As to how we ground-truth the modelling, that is going to be done via the signpost farms where we will measure the carbon content of every field on every farm and then also the national-----