DfE - SBRI - Innovative solution to deliver the real time monitoring of soil health

Tender description

Soil health underpins Northern Ireland’s drive for a productive and sustainable agri-food industry. Currently soil sampling takes place largely at the instigation of the farm owner or farm operator. In Northern Ireland soil cores are taken at either 0-7.5cm or 0-15cm depth (for grassland and arable crops respectively). The recommendation is to take at least 25 cores across the sampled field(s) to provide a bulked, representative sample for the entire field. These samples are then dispatched to a soil analysis contractor with the specified analysis request (a standard soil nutrient analysis would consist of; pH, P, K, Mg, with fertilizer recommendation being given based on provided crop details). The report would, in most circumstances, be returned within 2 weeks of the sample dispatch. Typical basic analysis costs would be in the region of £10.50, while the cost of collection will vary (depending on farmer collection or contractor), but it could be up to £28 per sample. A fuller analysis (including Carbon/Nitrogen) is currently estimated £30-40/sample. Another challenge to the farmer is the disjointed manual entry of their soil analysis results to the online Farm Nutrient Management tool which is both time consuming and can introduce errors. There is a growing need for the agri-community (including Govt and research establishments) to obtain immediate results and recommendations without the manual overhead currently involved. The Delivering Our Future, Valuing Our Soils: A Sustainable Agricultural Land Management Strategy for Northern Ireland outlines recommendations to aid the N Ireland agri- industry, namely to build a baseline of soil status, manage soils more effectively and produce improved results, therefore providing accurate and representative soil sampling and analysis of every field in Northern Ireland. The outcomes from this strategy will provide a platform to support the implementation of the following aims relating to this report: • Information which allows farmers to optimise their pH and nutrient management to maximize production/growth and reduce cost inputs • A baseline understanding of our current Soil Organic Carbon stock • Details of soils which are at high and low phosphorus indices • A means of identifying which fields may be suitable for receiving redistributed nutrients This project will link to the NI Water Framework to provide information to support the analysis of the over-supply of Phosphorous in fields which in turn carries risk of run-off into waterways and subsequent environmental impact and damage.