Visitors to FarmED are often curious to see scientists around the fields, armed with spades and various sampling and measuring tools, digging holes in the soil. They are part of the Centre for High Carbon Capture Cropping research project (CHCx3 for short). Reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving resilience to extreme weather, are global challenges for farming and land management that have been particularly front-of-mind during the heat waves and drought this summer. The CHCx3 scientists are researching crops and farming systems that may increase carbon capture and could help farming and associated industries address climate change.
FarmED and Cotswold Seeds are proud to be associated with this vital project and every quarter we will share an update from CHCx3 soil scientist, Jed Soleiman.
Autumn Fieldwork ‘25
We’ve completed another round of fieldwork and were joined by another brilliant team of four assistants who worked extremely hard, digging and cutting, and then processing and weighing all our samples. This not only helped us tackle large numbers of samples we generate, but also gives young entrants a chance to gain valuable experience to help propel them in future careers in agriculture, research, or ecology.
We collated all the data from 2025 and spent a week at FarmED comparing this more recent data to what’s been collected previously.
Data analysis, interpretation, and visualisations
By adding another complete year of data, we can begin understanding the impact of yearly climatic variation and other noise on the results we’re generating. This will be more accurate when three full years of data is available, however the process can begin now and be updated later.
We are also producing new visualisations that will capture seasonal and year-on-year variation, aiming to succinctly show how herbal leys change over time and what they might be responding to.
Temporal C dynamics analysis
Jed has finished the data analysis for the temporal C dynamics work. This is intended to help reveal the mechanisms of change below ground, and how herbal leys help to rebuild soil fertility following cropping. This is now being drafted into a paper prior to publication.
Exploitation: Wild Oxfordshire Soils Conference
Jed gave a presentation at the Wild Oxfordshire Local Environment Group’s Soils Conference in Oxford, where we met with many environmental and community groups to support their ongoing interest in more sustainable soils management. We presented the ongoing activities at FarmED and discussed how we believe this to be an important step to helping improve our soils and make farming processes more ecologically and climate friendly. The presentation was very well received and we hope to have many more discussions within the community and other interested groups in order to disseminate this knowledge as widely as possible.
British Ecological Society Presentation
Jed also gave a presentation at the annual meeting of the British Ecological Society in Edinburgh where he discussed the ongoing work at FarmED, and showed some of the data we’ve collected thus far. The presentation was well received and generated some interesting insights and feedback from audience members who came mainly from an academic background.
Next quarter: We’re preparing for the next round of fieldwork to take place in Spring ’26 and are looking for new field assistants to join us. Jed is also working on the new data visualisations and writing papers to begin sharing some of the data to wider communities.
CHCx3 Website
