Historic offer of free soil carbon reports for every Oxbury Bank loan customer

In a first for the United Kingdom, Oxbury Bank is set to offer free soil carbon analysis for every one of its loan customers, providing valuable new insights into more than 120,000 hectares of the nation’s farmland.

Soil organic carbon (SOC) is a key marker of the overall health and productivity of soil, a key component in farm profitability. Soil is also the world’s second largest greenhouse gas sink, behind the ocean, containing more carbon than the atmosphere and vegetation combined.

The SOC assessments will be completed by pioneering remote measurement and natural capital company, Downforce Technologies, which was founded by former Chief Scientist of the United Nations Environmental Programme, Professor Jacquie McGlade.

Downforce Technologies Chief Product Officer, Geoff Horrell, said it was a major development in both agriculture and banking and would generate valuable information for UK farmers.

“We are proud to be partnering with Oxbury Bank on such an exciting initiative that sets a new benchmark in banking that will unlock incredible insights for their customers,” Mr Horrell said.

“They will get a detailed map of the carbon levels in their soil down at a 10m resolution, with a dynamic assessment over time, providing an historical view of how those levels have changed with different farming practices over time.

“Given how important soil carbon is to soil health and yield, this will help inform farm management decision making, and, given the precision of our US-patented methodology, can be used to underpin reporting requirements to banks and supply chains.”

Oxbury Bank Chief Commercial Officer, Matt Ryan, said the initiative was a natural fit for the only UK bank solely dedicated to agriculture, food and farming.

“We launched in 2021 with a commitment to advancing the entire rural economy and this is a practical way we can help our customers in their farming decisions and management of greenhouse gas emissions,” Mr Ryan said.

“In addition, Oxbury is launching a new credit facility that enables farmers to manage their cashflow as they transition their businesses in order to reduce emissions and increase resilience. This is another first for UK farming businesses and another way Oxbury is looking to support this critical sector.”

The globally unique Oxbury Transition Facility provides funding for farmers to manage their cashflow and capital needs to transition their business to increase their resilience by reducing carbon emissions and improving their soil health and soil organic carbon.

Oxbury Co-founder and Managing Director Nick Evans said:

“Oxbury spent two years developing the Transition Facility ensuring that it understood the needs of farmers and the supply chain. The Bank concluded that the whole industry including government, banks and the supply-chain needs to work together to support farmers to remain profitable while reducing emissions and improving soil health. Our partnership with Downforce Technologies illustrates one such collaboration and will help farmers measure and prove that the changes that they have implemented are delivering results.”

The data from the assessments will also contribute to Oxbury Bank’s natural capital report, which is breaking new ground in assessing and disclosing the nature-based impacts of the bank, its supply chains and customer activity financed by the bank.

Trial finds customers “enthralled”

Oxbury Head of Sustainable Banking, Carolien Samson, said the announcement followed a successful pilot program conducted over the past 12 months.

“We have trialled Downforce with a number of customers already and they have been excited by the results,” Ms Samson said.

“They are enthralled by the fact that they can estimate the gap between their emissions and carbon stored on-farm in much more detail and assess the scale of change needed over various time scales.”

Oxbury non-executive director and West Hertfordshire cereal farmer, Richard Percy, took part in a pilot project and was interested to close some important information gaps.

“We’re essentially growing combinable crops – wheat, oilseed rape and spring barley for malting,” Mr Percy said.

“We know how much carbon we’re using to produce our crops but what we didn’t know was how much we’re tying up in the soil and, more importantly, how that changes from year to year.

“So now we know where we stand and what we want to try to do is see how we can reduce that going forward.”

Richard’s son, Henry, helps run Cottingham Farm and said he was surprised with the results.

It’s actually really easy to see the trends,” Mr Percy said.

“It’s given us historical data and we can link it to things like rainfall and cropping and we can make decisions with that.

“In the short term if we can make little changes and see results going forward then we can change the way we crop, we could use more cover crops, we could introduce a livestock farmer to take those cover crops and be more adventurous on that side.”

For more information on the program visit the Oxbury Bank website. To learn more about how Downforce Technologies can help your farm operation, get in touch.

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