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Event Highlights

September Event Highlights

September was a busy month here at FCT, and in addition to our Annual Field Day, we also participated in the UK Dairy Day and the Agroforestry Show.

Our stand at the Dairy Day Show at the Telford International Centre allowed us to meet with farmers and dairy industry professionals from across the UK. A key topic of discussion for all stakeholders was the need to reduce carbon emissions throughout the dairy supply chain and the practices that can contribute to achieving the desired reductions. Also on the agenda was how the sustainable use of nutrients on farms can help farmers to build productivity whilst cutting input costs and lowering the potential losses to the wider environment.

The 2nd ever Agroforestry Show took place just inside the M25 this year, and FCT’s presence was highly relevant. Several visitors headed straight to our stand, either to say hello in real life, having used our website or carbon calculator, or to find out about the services we offer. Senior advisor Rob Purdew hosted a well-received session with David Oattes and Stuart Rogers, both farmers we already work with who have included trees in the functioning of their farm systems (beef and dairy, respectively). The discussion explored the impact of the inclusion of increased hedges and in-field trees on farm carbon sequestration and the surprisingly swift apparent increase in soil organic matter and, therefore, soil carbon in the vicinity of the new planting. Stuart Rogers and FCT project assistant Jemma Morgan also recorded an episode of Ffinlo Costain’s popular Farm Gate podcast on the wider impact of Agroforestry on Stuart’s dairy farm in Wiltshire. An encouraging increase in the number of UK tree nurseries was also present at the Show, proving that where there’s a desire to include resilience-building trees on any farm, there’s a sensibly local source to provide them. Many venues hosted a wide range of interesting and inspiring talks and discussions, with demonstrations and farm walks to engage visitors too. Overall, there is momentum building as the understanding of the importance of trees as a value-added element of a climate-resilient farm system becomes more widely understood. Look out for us when it comes to the third Agroforestry Show – we’ll definitely be there.

Our FCT Annual Field Day in a nutshell

For people unable to make our Annual Field Day held in North Lincolnshire at the end of September, we have captured some of the take-home messages from the morning farm walk around the Pink Pig Farm, with our hosts, the Jackson family.

During the morning, we walked around the farm, pausing at four stations to hear from our farmers and FCT staff. Our four stations covered:

Plant Nutrition: Diagnostics and Low-Input Management

Integration of livestock into arable rotations

The importance of soil health

Regenerative farming ten years on

If you would like to speak to us about how you can adapt these practices for your farm business please contact FCT on info@farmcarbontoolkit.org.uk or phone us on 07541 453413

Carbon Farmer of the Year 2025 – Winner Announced!

The winner and runners-up of the 2025 Carbon Farmer of the Year competition were announced at the Farm Carbon Toolkit’s Annual Field Day in Lincolnshire.

Now in its third year, the annual Carbon Farmer of the Year competition is organised by the Farm Carbon Toolkit and generously sponsored by HSBC Agriculture UK. The competition aims to find farmers and growers who are engaged with, and passionate about, reducing their business’s climate impact through changing management practices to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

2025 Carbon Farmer of the Year Winner

The winner of this year’s Carbon Farmer of the Year Competition is Stuart & Helen Rogers from Longmoor Farm, North Dorset – a dairy farm supplying Waitrose.

Stuart & Helen Rogers, Longmoor Farm, North Dorset

2025 Carbon Farmer of the Year Runners-up

Runners-up from this year’s competition were Richard and Lyn Anthony from Bridgend, Wales, and Catherine and Malcolm Barrett (Tregooden Farm, Cornwall)

Richard and Lyn Anthony operate a diverse arable and forage system with integrated livestock, plus contracting. Catherine and Malcolm Barrett are mixed farmers and Duchy of Cornwall tenants who have built a resilient system through agroforestry, rotations and community connection.

Competition judges, Steve Dunkley (HSBC UK), Liz Bowles (CEO Farm Carbon Toolkit) and Joanne Sharpe (Farm Carbon Toolkit Non-exec director) were very impressed with the commitment and innovation shown by all the finalists in identifying sources of GHG emissions on their farms and developing strategies to both reduce emissions and increase the rate of carbon removal into soils and non-crop biomass.

Rob Purdew, Senior Farm Advisor at Farm Carbon Toolkit, says:

“Yet again, we have been blown away by the standard of entries to this year’s Carbon Farmer of the Year competition. Picking a winner has been extremely challenging, and all of the finalists are a huge credit to the agricultural sector in the UK. Each of them has risen to the challenge of producing top-quality food at a time of ever-increasing scrutiny into the environmental cost of producing that food, adopting a wide range of innovative practices to minimise the carbon impact of their operations. There will be an opportunity to see all of these farms up close and personal at free farm walks in the near future.”

Martin Hanson, HSBC Head of Agriculture, says:

“HSBC UK Agriculture is pleased to support the 2025 Carbon Farmer of the Year competition again.  We’ve had three high-quality finalists from very different sectors, all hugely inspiring to others. As a business, we’re very keen to support the industry in transitioning towards net zero. While that will take many forms, we have the ambition to help farmers fund investment in the new practices and technologies needed to evolve. The Carbon Farmer of the Year competition is a great way of showcasing how farmers are already achieving these changes and encouraging others to follow their lead. “

About the Farm Carbon Toolkit and the Carbon Farmer of the Year competition

Farm Carbon Toolkit is an independent, farmer-led Community Interest Company, supporting farmers to measure, understand and act on their greenhouse gas emissions, while improving their business resilience for the future.

For over a decade, Farm Carbon Toolkit has delivered a range of practical projects, tools and services that have inspired real action on the ground. Organisations they work with include the Duchy of Cornwall, First Milk, Tesco, Yeo Valley and WWF. The Farm Carbon Calculator is a leading on-farm carbon audit tool, used by over 10,000 farmers in the UK and beyond.

The Carbon Farmer of the Year competition aims to recognise and champion farmers, sector organisations, and businesses who are leading the way in adopting farming practices and developing new technologies that are helping to reduce farm emissions while optimising output. 

This competition allows for discussions on greenhouse gas emissions and sinks on farms to be framed in a very practical way to allow for maximum engagement with the issue. Farm Carbon Toolkit facilitates discussion and information sharing between farmers and other actors, which ultimately leads to changes in on-farm practice.

The long-term objective of this competition is to create a network of alumni who are changing their management practices to better manage emissions and carbon storage on farmland, and who will inspire others through activity, practical demonstrations, and advocacy for changing management practices.

Groundswell 2025

Groundswell
Groundswell

Looking forward to Groundswell next week!

As well as the award ceremony to announce the 2025 Soil Farmer of the Year winners at 7pm on Wednesday at Speakers Corner, FCT’s Hannah Jones and Becky Willson are involved in two workshops.

Weds 2nd July 1.15pm: Regenerative Stacking, The Study (Hannah Jones)

Thurs 3rd July 11am: Farming for the health of people and climate, Grass Tent (Becky Willson)

And, of course, we’ll have our usual stand E2 in the Pasture Field where we’ll be happy to chat all things soil and farm carbon related!

Fingers crossed the weather holds…

More detail in accounting for livestock management practices

Calculator update thumbnail

Improvements to the methodology of the Farm Carbon Calculator mean you can now better capture the detail of livestock management on your farm. More detail in accounting for livestock management practices means both improved accuracy of reporting and better evidencing of efforts to reduce emissions.

What’s changed?

Manure management options

Instead of selecting from just four options for livestock manure management, there are now 9 categories of manure storage with a variety of further amendments and actions associated that may reduce emissions on farm. Full details of the options and what these mean can be found on our Manure Storage Systems guide.

Diet type

Where you have the time and information available to provide detailed information about the type of diet your livestock consumes, it is now possible to use the Farm Carbon Calculator to gain a higher accuracy estimate of enteric methane emissions. This can have a particularly marked effect on the emissions resulting from e.g. a grass-fed vs compound-fed animal. The detailed methodology relies on dry-matter-intake (DMI) but if you don’t know this, we have a Guide to DMI to help you convert forage and “as-fed” weights to DMI.

If you don’t want to enter so much detail, the Farm Carbon Calculator will use the UK GHG inventory default assumptions for livestock diets and consumption.

How will the changes affect my report?

We know it’s important for year on year carbon reporting to maintain consistency. For this reason, legacy reports won’t be automatically transferred into the new livestock calculation. 

If you decide to use the new calculation method, this will improve the accuracy of your results. For the majority of reports it will also reduce emissions because most of the previous defaults were based on the highest emitting options in each category. The new options are considered “mitigation measures” allowing for a reduction in the assumed emissions of greenhouse gases compared to a conventional manure management method or livestock ration.

At the end of this blog, we have summarised a few examples of how a report might look with the simplified and more detailed methodologies.

Do I need to do anything?

If you are creating a new report, you will automatically be shown the new calculation methodology but if you don’t have enough information to hand, you can fall back to the simpler method. For existing reports, there a number of options available: you can either manually update each livestock entry or “Migrate” all entries within a report. We have a full guide to switching to the new calculation method:

Guide to updating your reports containing livestock

Manure and slurry applications (spreading)

The main change for livestock farms will be that you need to enter any manure or slurry spreading (whether imported or produced by your own animals) under the Crops > Organic Fertility Sources section of the Calculator (as pictured below).

What if I exported manure or slurry?

You need to account for any storage of manure and slurry on your own farm. So if it remains on farm for 1 month, you need to select the appropriate option for that livestock entry.

You do not need to account for the manure or slurry storage once it has left your farm. You do not need to account for the spreading of that manure on somebody else’s land.

What if I want to keep my report the same?

To ensure your original report remains unchanged, we would recommend locking it. You can do this by selecting your report from your dashboard and then selecting the “Lock” report button at the top right hand of the screen:

You can copy your report. Copying a report leaves the original report with the legacy data in the livestock section, but updates the copy of the report transferring the livestock into the new calculation method. To copy, find your report in your dashboard under “My Reports” and then click the copy icon for that report:

You could then directly compare these reports to see how emissions estimates have changed. We have aligned the old animal waste management options with the new manure storage options to allow this transfer, but some assumptions on systems have been made and we would encourage you to check the manure storage options to see if there is an option more relevant for your system.

Why does the Calculator keep changing?

Sometimes the calculations underlying your report change because of an improved understanding of biological systems or a re-interpretation of the available evidence. In a developing field like agricultural carbon footprinting, working with other organisations to make sense of the available evidence and international guidance within the UK context can help us identify areas where calculations can be improved. This is why we continue to seek pre-competitive collaborations with other companies and research organisations (to find out more about our projects and harmonisation work).

Can I get help?

Contact Michael Brown at calculator@farmcarbontoolkit.org.uk

What kind of change in emissions can I expect?

The rest of this blog will dig into some comparisons of what might change for different types of livestock. 

We have focussed on the management practices that result in the biggest change in emissions compared to the simpler (old) methodology. The comparisons here include only enteric methane emissions and manure methane and nitrous oxide emissions; the areas that now have more detail in accounting for livestock. These comparisons do not include emissions embedded in the production of feedstuffs or bedding since these have not changed as a result of the recent methodology update.

Comparison 1 – dairy cattle, grass-based

In this example, emissions from 100 head of dairy cattle in each category in a 100% grass-based outdoor system are compared using the old and new methodology. Being able to take their detailed manure management and diet type into account with the new methodology would reduce livestock-related emission by 23.5% for dairy cows in this system.

Comparison 2 – sheep outdoor year round

Here we have used 100 head of each category of sheep, assuming 80kg mature weight and 30kg lamb average weight. Being able to take their detailed manure management and diet type into account with the new methodology slightly increases livestock-related emissions for ewes by 11.3% for example. Sheep are the only category of livestock for which the new detailed methodology shows an increase in emissions but it will not be the case for all sheep enterprises. The difference is dependent on manure management and diet of the flock in question.


Comparison 3 – 100% grass-fed beef

In this example, emissions from 100 head of each beef cattle category in a 100% grass-based outdoor system are compared using the old and new methodology. Being able to take detailed manure management and diet type into account with the new methodology would reduce livestock-related emission by 15.3% for beef suckler cows and 7.2% for beef finishing steers in this system, all else being equal.


Comparison 4 – beef cattle with different types of manure management

The following is a comparison of the same 100 beef cattle (all with the same liveweight of 450kg and assumed diet) but with 100% of their manure managed under the available options. This demonstrates the difference in emissions (for beef cattle) from the different manure management options. The magnitude of difference in emissions and management options available varies between different livestock types.