We need to capture more carbon from the atmosphere to slow climate change. While carbon capture technology is a possibility, one startup in Australia believes we can capture more carbon by planting seeds that are coated in microbial fungi and bacteria, which improve the plant’s carbon-capturing ability.

Soil Carbon Co., the startup that is developing the new microbial technology-based on the University of Sydney research, believes that if it were used on farmland globally, it could sequester around 8.5 gigatons of carbon every year—or around a quarter of total CO2 emissions. It could also store that carbon for a longer time than some “regenerative agriculture” techniques that also aim to capture carbon.

Adding a blend of microbes to crops on a farm allows plants to store carbon more effectively. In the normal carbon cycle, a plant sucks up CO2 through photosynthesis, and some of the carbon ends up traveling through the plant’s roots into the soil. But some of that carbon is still lost fairly quickly back into the air. The coating of fungi and bacteria helps instead convert the carbon into a form that can last in the soil much longer, potentially hundreds of years.

The process also makes the soil healthier, so farmers should see better yields and be able to use less fertilizer. It’s a relatively simple change to make; farmers either buy microbe-coated seeds or coat their own seeds themselves, something that is commonly done with other products. 

The company, which plans to launch commercially within two years after finishing trials in Australia and the US, believes that working with farmers is one of the most promising ways to reduce CO2 levels. Their reasoning makes sense: plants can play the same role as the larger direct-air-capture machines, at a lower cost, while farmers can earn extra money selling carbon credits. That’s something that we at the Optimist Daily can get behind.