Restoring Soil to Help Cool the Earth
SCP has created a breakthrough soil fertility amendment, using ingredients that meet USDA organic standards, that delivers thousands of beneficial microbes, dozens of essential minerals, and a stable form of humus to depleted soils. SCP applies ten tons per acre of its powerful soil amendment on its clients’ fields to restore depleted soils to high-functioning levels. The result is three to five times higher crop yields and a 50% increase in protein in forage crops.
SCP plants bio-diverse and seasonal annual forage crops to supplement perennial grass on its clients’ fields, giving the cows that graze there high nutrient density forage nearly all year long. The supercharged forage optimizes the cows’ weight gain and health, which leads to better quality meat and higher sale prices. The protein-rich forage also eliminates the farmers’ need to send the cows to feed lots for “fattening up,” reducing production expenses.
SCP works closely with its clients to introduce grazing techniques that reduce the amount of wasted forage from 50% to 10%. Ensuring that the cows don’t eat the forage “too short,” which slows re-growth of grass, and promoting perceived competition among the cows that leads to them biting-off weeds they dislike, prevents weeds from re-growing the next season.
The result of SCP’s 3-pillar system is significantly increased farmer revenues. Our business model is to partner with farmers to enable them to economically implement our soil fertility amendment, intercropping strategies, and grazing management. We share 50/50 the incremental revenue from beef sales for the first five years.
Improving crop yield per acre at scale reduces the need for farmers to cut down more forests to plant more crops or graze more cattle. That, in turn, helps mitigate climate change.
We executed our farming system for beef cattle on 40 acres of this large farm in summer 2022. Scientists and professors from Princeton and the University of Vermont tested forage yields on fields with our soil fertility amendment and those without.
Forage yield with our fertility was 3 times more than the control group grown without our fertility, measured by dry weight. Forage plants with our fertility were tall, (5 to 6 feet), robust, dark green and vital.
We achieved these impressive results during an 8 week extreme drought that devastated most crops in Central New Jersey in summer 2022, rainfall was 95% below normal.
Our forage was a completely positive exception to the devastated corn and alfalfa crops on this farm and in the entire region. The farm manager, our client, called our forage results “mind-bogglingly impressive.”
Our farming system was implemented on 4o acres of this large farm in summer 2022. The research design compared forage yield and animal weight gain with SCP’s soil fertility amendment, versus forage growth on soil without our amendment.
The large plant in his right hand in the photo above was grown in our SCP fertility, and the plant in his left hand did not. These plants were planted at the same time, in immediately adjacent fields, under the same conditions. Six weeks later this photo was taken. It is clear that the pastures with our fertility produced dramatically more forage growth.
Average cow weight gain per day with our SCP fertility was over twice as large (3.6 pounds per day versus 1.5 pounds per day which is the U.S. norm). These results are particularly impressive considering the extreme 8-week drought with rainfall 95% less than prior years.
The goal of the project was to test the impact of our fertility amendment on forage volume, growth and nutrient/protein content compared to forage without it.
This lush forage that received our soil fertility grew to be 6 feet tall. Grasses without our fertility were under two feet tall. Forage with our fertility was very green, robust and loved by the cows.
Yield was 6 times higher than fields without our fertility. Protein content in forage was 50% higher and animal weight gain per day was twice as high as forage without our fertility. Wildlife diversity also increased significantly.
We have the nature-based solutions needed by farmers. Soils are very depleted around the world, making it hard for farmers to grow enough food/yield to make a living. Per the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 46% of the world’s land is desert or arid wasteland.
The reasons that soils have become depleted include plowing, erosion, oxidation of soil carbon that stores minerals and water for the plants, resulting destruction of microbes and depletion of minerals, and soil compaction.
At SCP, we are committed to finding funding to get our fertility materials and know-how into farmers’ hands and restore their soil to grow more and better food per acre and increase farm income. At scale, this will reduce the need to cut more forests to find better land.
Our business model is to partner with farmers to enable them to implement our soil fertility amendment, intercropping strategies and grazing management — and share 50/50 the incremental revenue from beef sales for the first five years.
Large Volumes Applied — 10 tons per acre
