Soil Carbon Part 2 - A soil scientist's viewpoint - Dr Fran Hoyle

In the previous podcast about soil carbon we heard from Peter McInerney from Wagga Wagga in New South Wales about practicing agronomist’s point of view on increasing soil carbon levels. Peter sees soil carbon as an important part of improving soils and therefore plant production.

There is no doubt about the benefits of soil carbon to soil health and agriculture. Loss of soil organic carbon means lower nutrients and water holding capacity and the soil becomes harder. It has been estimated that since Europeans colonised Australia we have lost up to 75% of total soil organic carbon. A sad state of affairs.

However there is a lot of talk about how we can take carbon out of the atmosphere and into the soil and be paid for it. But just how easy is that going to be particularly for a grower in Western Australia?

In this podcast I’m speaking with Dr Fran Hoyle who’s had several decades as an agronomist and soil scientist and has put a lot of years into measuring and studying soil carbon and how it behaves under different situations.

Fran started as a wheat agronomist with the West Australian Department of agriculture (DAFWA), and had an increasing focus on soil quality and biological function. More recently she joined the University of Western Australia continuing work on management of soil organic carbon and as Director of SoilsWest.

In this Giving a RATS pod cast we get more detail about soil carbon and what we can realistically expect on how to build up our soil carbon levels.

Contact Fran - https://research-repository.uwa.edu.au/en/persons/frances-hoyle

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Further Reading