News & Insights

Monitoring soil health on a massive scale requires tools that are affordable, non-invasive, and highly scalable. To achieve this, the Earth Rover Program is developing a new generation of wireless sensors using MEMS accelerometers. In this blog, I will explore how these cheap, tiny chips are replacing bulky, wired traditional sensors to scale up high-frequency "Soilsmology" surveys and equip farmers worldwide.

Agriculture in Kenya heavily relies on fertilizers, and traditional soil sampling methods have been extensively used to monitor and quantify soil health. The Earth Rover Program (ERP), a not-for-profit organisation, aims to empower farmers to sustain high yields while minimising interventions. ERP has leveraged traditional seismic technologies for non-invasively “seeing” into the soil.

Conservation Agriculture (CA) manages farms to boost productivity while protecting soil health. In this blog, I’ll outline the experiment’s setup, highlight key results, and show how it has supported other research, including work with the Earth Rover Program.