00:00G'day, my name's Guy Webb. I grew up on a farm near Condoblin in central west New South Wales
00:07on a grains and sheep farm. I evolved from there into an agronomy career where I studied soil
00:15science at Australian National University. That led me to an interest in soil health and
00:21particularly in broadacre farming where we're seeing declining levels of fertility and soil
00:27carbon. Inevitably that led me to starting a not-for-profit research institute called Soil
00:34Sequest 2031 which was heavily involved and still is in looking at the science behind carbon
00:41sequestration in agricultural soils, again particularly in broadacre soils, grain production. Through
00:48some serendipity and good luck and a fair bit of hard work that led to spinning out a company called
00:55Loam Bio that is an Australian company that is tasked with developing a soil carbon
01:02fungal endophyte that we can inoculate onto broadacre crops and increase the sequestration of carbon,
01:09stable carbon, into our agricultural soils. That's been an exciting ride for the last six
01:14years because it's led to Loam starting as an Australian company and now as a global company
01:21in North America and South America as well as expanding in Australia. The vision here is to give
01:28a tool to farmers that enables them to increase the carbon in their soils which obviously increases the
01:36resilience and the productivity of their soils at the same time as pulling carbon dioxide out of the
01:42air where we don't want it and putting it into a place that we really do want it in our
01:46agricultural soils.
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