Increasingly, we are seeing the essential role the food system can play in our mission to Decarbonise the Planet while scaling to Feed 10B People by 2050. The companies we’re most excited by — and the ones getting the most traction — have figured out how to work across the supply chain, creating significant value to multiple segments, and using that value to incentivise participation and overcome barriers to adoption. With the enormous hype — and concurrent confusion — in the carbon economy, solutions need to be underpinned by credible science, with rigorous measurement and verification.

When we first met Guy, Tegan and the rest of the Founders from Loam Bio (then Soil Carbon Co), we absolutely loved their ambition. Moreover, despite the breakthrough nature of Loam’s science and technology platform, the team were grounded in pragmatism; they knew they would have to demonstrate the value in extensive, independently managed trials. Their core business model requirement was to deliver the solution in a way that could be adopted at scale.

As Guy says, “We’re working with the world’s largest terrestrial carbon sink”. Tapping into our existing agricultural infrastructure and expertise, and a deep knowledge of microbial science, means we can use what we already have to create immense progress in our climate goals, while other systems come into play.

Fast forward to today and we couldn’t be more pleased with the progress and the shift in focus with the commercial launch of CarbonBuilder (soil-carbon-building microbial inoculum) and SecondCrop (farmer-friendly carbon projects). These products essentially give farmers the ability to multiply the amount of carbon sequestered in the soil, along with a market mechanism to benefit from that carbon with fewer risks than traditional carbon credit projects.

To turbocharge this, Loam is announcing their $105m Series B round led by our friends at Lower Carbon Capital and Wollemi Capital, along with Main Sequence and other existing investors. We are proud to be doubling down on this investment, having as much conviction as ever on the potential for agriculture to solve climate change, and Loam’s potential for true gigatonne-scale carbon removal.