Launched at last year’s Groundswell regenerative agriculture festival, Soil Acoustics’ Soil Acoustic Meter (SAM) is a handheld probe that records sounds generated by soil organisms. Inserted into the ground, the device captures vibrations from earthworms, beetle larvae, ants, and other invertebrates, then uploads the data to a cloud platform for analysis.
Each recording is GPS-tagged and compared against a growing global reference database of over 5,000 soil sound samples. The result is a rapid soil analysis sample or Soil Acoustics Quality Index (SAQI) – a sharp contrast to traditional worm pits, which take up to 20 minutes to dig and assess.
Why sound? ‘A healthy soil is a noisy soil’
“A healthy soil is noisy because it has lots of invertebrates moving around,” explains ecologist and founder Andrew Baker. “We measure this biological diversity using sound as a proxy for soil health.”
The principle draws on decades of eco-acoustics research traditionally used to monitor bats, birds, and marine mammals. Soil Acoustics adapted this approach for agriculture, asking a simple question: What happens if you put a microphone in the ground? The answer: a new way to track soil life.
Faster, cheaper, and more scalable
Conventional soil tests often involve sending samples to a lab – costly and time-consuming – or digging worm pits, which can take 20 minutes and offer limited insight. SAM delivers a three-minute analysis in the field, putting actionable data directly in farmers’ hands.
“People need information faster than sending it off to labs and more scientifically than digging a digging a soil pit and looking at the worms,” says co-founder Saffron Johnston. The technology creates a baseline for soil biology, she explains, so farmers can track changes before and after interventions like tilling or cover cropping.
If your soil is noisy, she says, it means life is thriving. Active creatures indicate that other soil metrics are in balance and that “microcosms, fungi, bacteria, and even the larger fauna are all working together”.
When you play the sounds of worms to people, she adds, “they get very excited.”
From research to commercial service
Developed with the University of Warwick under DEFRA’s Farm Improvement Programme, Soil Acoustics emerged as a sister company to Baker Consultants. It now offers subscription-based data services for farmers, land managers, consultants, and conservation projects to monitor soil biology, support regenerative agriculture decisions, and provide evidence for schemes such as the UK Sustainable Farming Incentive.
Early adopters include regenerative agriculture food brand Wildfarmed, JoJo’s Vineyard which is spearheading the concept of regenerative viticulture, and Affinity Water, which uses SAM to monitor soil health in catchments supplying drinking water to 3.8 million people as it aims to reduce nitrate and pesticide losses to groundwater.
Positioned for growth
Soil Acoustics was among the early-stage start-ups showcasing their solutions at REAP 2025, the annual conference of Agri-TechE, the not-for-profit connecting farmers, researchers, technologists, and entrepreneurs to stimulate innovation in agriculture.
With EU policy targeting healthy soils by 2050 and global brands seeking proof of regenerative practices, demand for scalable soil monitoring tools is rising. Future applications may also include early pest detection and species-specific acoustic tracking.
Soil Acoustics holds a UK patent for SAM, has international patents pending, and has farmers collecting data in 13 countries. The company is now seeking investment to scale its technology and expand its database.
“It’s really simple technology,” Johnston says. “The clever stuff is the analysis and designing the algorithms to process the data. Creating the models to provide meaningful data outputs that can be easily interpreted is the key to its success.”
Making noise
She also believes that other groups working on soil or eco-acoustics typically frame their work as research into soil biodiversity, carbon monitoring, or restoration diagnostics, and are not yet offering an off‑the‑shelf, farmer‑oriented product.
As regenerative agriculture moves from niche to mainstream, tools like SAM could become essential for documenting soil health, guiding farm decisions, and meeting sustainability targets. Soil Acoustics is betting that listening underground will help farmers prove that healthy soils really do make a noise.
