Yard Stick

Yard Stick PBC, founded in 2021 and based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is developing innovative soil carbon measurement technology to enable large-scale carbon sequestration in agricultural soils. The company's proprietary hardware and software solution aims to dramatically reduce the cost and complexity of measuring soil organic carbon, a critical component for verifying carbon offset projects and helping companies reduce emissions in their agricultural supply chains.

Yard Stick's technology uses in-situ reflectance spectroscopy to measure soil carbon content in real-time in the field. Their handheld probe device can measure soil organic carbon up to one meter in depth without removing soil samples. This data is then processed through Yard Stick's software platform, which provides analytics and reporting capabilities. The company claims their approach can reduce soil carbon measurement costs by over 90% compared to conventional lab-based methods while improving accuracy.

As of 2023, Yard Stick offers its soil sampling and measurement services on a per-acre basis to project developers, agricultural brands, and land managers. The company has secured multi-year contracts worth over USD 17 million in revenue and has conducted fieldwork across hundreds of thousands of acres in 26 US states. Their technology is already compliant with voluntary carbon market crediting programs. Yard Stick was also awarded USD 18 million in funding from the USDA's Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program in September 2022 to support soil carbon measurement for various agricultural research projects.

Key customers and partnerships

Yard Stick's customers include project developers working on soil carbon offset initiatives as well as food and agriculture companies looking to reduce emissions in their supply chains. Some notable customers and partners include Organic Valley, which is using Yard Stick's technology to measure soil carbon on dairy farms in its supply network. The company is also working with research institutions - for example, they signed an USD 11 million contract with a university to support a large-scale project studying low-carbon beef production methods.

Yard Stick has formed partnerships with key players in the soil carbon and regenerative agriculture space. They collaborate closely with scientists at the Soil Health Institute, including Dr. Cristine Morgan, who conducted much of the original research on soil carbon spectroscopy that Yard Stick's technology is based on. The company also works with agricultural cooperatives and project developers to implement their measurement solutions at scale across farming operations.