Farm Carbon Toolkit is pleased to be a partner in delivering the Centre for High Carbon Capture Cropping (CHCx3) project.
This is a four-year, multi-partner project, led by Niab. The research aims to help UK farmers and growers in their decarbonisation efforts (supporting the UK’s Net Zero ambition) and build farming resilience through diversifying their arable and forage cropping. It will support new revenue sources related to carbon and enhanced value chains for industries such as textiles and construction.
The project is focusing on four cropping options: cover crops; annual fibre crops (industrial hemp, flax); perennial food, feed, and forage cropping (including cereals and herbal leys); and perennial biomass crops (miscanthus, willow/poplar). Field trials and demonstrations will examine the effect of cultivation systems and agronomy on economic returns and environmental outcomes, with practical outputs including crop guides, web tools and apps.
It seeks to improve the understanding of the carbon impact of these crops and to increase knowledge of these options to farmers and growers across the UK. The project also seeks to promote the products to industry and end users, ultimately aiming to develop and grow markets for these as a mechanism to displace existing synthetic fossil fuel-based products.
Project Objectives
- Evaluate food, forage, and industrial cropping options with the potential to enhance atmospheric carbon capture, and sequestration in the soil and crop-based products
- Optimise production of renewable biomaterials for fibre, textiles, and construction, and build value chains
- Establish a UK Knowledge Hub providing resources to support the effective uptake and utilisation of crops with high carbon capture potential
- Quantify carbon removals, consistent with emerging standards for measurement, monitoring, reporting and verification
- Develop carbon insetting/offsetting platforms, achieving revenue generation for farmers and supporting corporate sustainability
Farm Carbon Toolkit’s Role in the CHCx3 Project
The Farm Carbon Toolkit will be providing expertise to the project through:
- Training the project partners in rigorous protocols for accurate and robust soil sampling to help build accurate data on the carbon impact of the crops within the project.
- To provide a carbon footprinting service to the circa 27 sites or businesses currently growing the trials of high-carbon crops.
- Improve how carbon calculators address the emissions and sequestration associated with these crops and support farmers who wish to enter the Voluntary Carbon Market.
The crops focused on within this project are often considered “niche underutilised” crops in the UK. They are grown across England in a range of different soil types, and therefore, the data that arises from the project will substantively support the depth of understanding the Farm Carbon Calculator has for high-carbon crops, providing a much more robust dataset, substantially increasing our understanding and the reliability of the data.
Link to Project Website: https://www.carboncapturecropping.com
List of Project Partners
Niab, Biorenewables Development Centre, Bitrez, British Hemp Alliance, Cotswold Seeds, Crops for Energy, Elsoms Seeds, Energy Crops Consultancy, FarmED, Farm Carbon Toolkit, FC Palmer & Sons, National Farmers Union of England & Wales (NFU), Natural Building Systems, Northern Ireland Hemp Association, Rothamsted Research, Terravesta, UK Hempcrete, University of York, Unyte Hemp.
Find out more
To find out more, visit: www.carboncapturecropping.com
