Industrial - Honours
The Microbe Dispensary is a large-scale vermicast brewing system for the agricultural industry. The brewing system facilitates soil regeneration through enabling the extraction of microbiology from vermicast and transforms it into 2000L of liquid soil amendment concentrate.
Extensive literature reviews and interviews with key stakeholders within the agricultural industry uncovered significant concerns surrounding declining soil health and the negative impacts this has on food security and greenhouse gas emissions. The decline in soil health was predominantly identified within conventional farming management practices such as chemical pesticides, insecticide & herbicides, tillage, monocropping and a lack of organic matter input. The extractive farming practices reduce the ‘life’ of the soil through its detrimental impact on the diversity and abundance of microbes, minerals, earth-worm populations, the overall health of Soil Food Web and the soil’s ability to sequester carbon from the atmosphere and decomposed organic matter into the soil.
The key findings indicated that farmers were having to increase their management and input costs exponentially yet, continue to experience pest and disease problems, declines in soil water-holding capacity, yield size, health of their produce and overall profitability.
Carbon Offset Programs are projects which reduce greenhouse gas emissions or increase carbon storage (carbon sequestration). Examples of these programs include clean energy implementation, forestry planting restoration, implementation of regenerative farming techniques for soil regeneration. Through the reduction or storage of this carbon, carbon credits are accumulated which can be traded on a global market. As the climate crisis grows exponentially, corporations are needing to offset their carbon-producing activities. This is achieved through purchasing these regulated credits and ‘retiring’ them to the carbon value they are required to offset.
Allowing farmers to gain access to a carbon offsetting program not only provides them with a potential passive income but assists them in the regeneration of their soils to gain the innumerable agronomic, business and environmental benefits of the application of vermicast extract.
Francesca has a passion for tackling the globe's current sustainability challenges through her design work. With two years experience in industry, she has established a wide range of skills and thoroughly enjoys collaborating with diverse teams of people to deliver the best design outcomes.