My guest this episode Robin Saluoks, founder of eAgronom, told me something that flips the whole net zero debate on its head.
“The soil. Without it, we wouldn’t exist… many of us probably don’t know how thin layer of soil is around the planet. There is more carbon in the soil than in all of the plants above the ground,” he told me, a line which completely reframes the obsession with trees and forests.
The problem is we’ve been destroying that asset at pace. “We have lost about one third of our soils, perhaps even more,” he said, pointing to decades of intensive farming.
What eAgronom does is step into that gap and make soil restoration measurable and investable. “We change the economics… bring carbon income to farmers,” he explained, using data and monitoring to track how much carbon is actually stored in the soil and pay farmers for it.
That matters because farmers won’t change on ideology alone. “It’s a risk to change something,” Robin told me, especially when margins are tight and decisions are made harvest by harvest. He should know he comes from a farming family going back decades.
The fixes themselves are straightforward but powerful: cover crops, less soil disturbance and better rotations. “Every time you cultivate the soil, some of the carbon is released,” he said.
The result is about one tonne of CO2 per hectare being stored while improving resilience and reducing input costs. “It makes their yields more stable and reduces the input cost,” he added.
This is carbon removal, food security and climate resilience rolled into one system that’s already scaling across Europe.
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