Tag: climate change

Press release: 2024 CFOTY finalists announced!

Posted on September 11, 2024 by - Carbon Farmer of the Year, News

Farm Carbon Toolkit announces shortlisted farms for the 2024 Carbon  Farmer of the Year competition 

Four farmers from across the UK – including three dairy farms – have been shortlisted for this year’s Carbon Farmer of the Year competition in recognition of their efforts to reduce their business’s climate impact.

The 2024 Carbon Farmer of the Year Shortlist:

  • Andrew Brewer from Ennis Barton, Fraddon, Cornwall (Arla supplier)
  • Jason Mitchell, Gary Logue and Adam Moore from Greenville Dairies Ltd, Newton Stewart, Northern Ireland  (Lakeland supplier)
  • Tom Burge from Oaremead Farm, Lynton, Devon 
  • Wesley Semple from Derryduff Farm, Dungiven, Northern Ireland  (Lakeland supplier)

Now in its second 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 practice to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from their businesses. 

As part of the competition, the top three farmers will host free farm walks that bring farmers together to share good practice and innovations that result in reduced emissions, as well as improving carbon removal into soils, trees, hedges and non-crop biomass. The competition is becoming widely recognised by organisations working to reduce the emissions from UK agriculture, with many promoting it to their networks to increase participation.

Rob Purdew, Farm Carbon and Soil Advisor with Farm Carbon Toolkit, says 

“We’ve been blown away by the quality of the entries for this year’s Carbon Farmer of the Year competition The sheer variety of entries for this year’s competition highlights the fact that, despite differences in farming systems and locations, many farmers are finding truly innovative ways to reduce their business greenhouse gas emissions.

It is particularly positive to see three dairy farmers in this year’s shortlist, given that dairy farming is often in the media spotlight in terms of its environmental impact. We are working with numerous dairy farmers and dairy industry projects that are already showcasing that this doesn’t need to be the case, and that farmers can make simple management changes to significantly improve their carbon and environmental footprints. We’re grateful to everyone who took the time and effort to enter.

Steve Dunkley, HSBC Agriculture, says 

HSBC UK Agriculture is pleased to support the 2024 Carbon Farmer of the Year competition and  the quality of entries has been superb and hugely inspiring. 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.

The judging process now involves visiting each of the four finalists to learn more about their farming practices before selecting the winners.

The winners of the 2024 Carbon Farmer of the Year competition will be announced at the Farm Carbon Toolkit Annual Field Day on the 26th September 2024, this year kindly hosted by 2023 Soil Farmer of the Year winner Billy Lewis at Boycefield Farm, Dilwyn, Herefordshire. A day for farmers, by farmers, the FCT Annual Field Day is about sharing practical experiences for improving performance and resilience in a challenging environment with this year’s event focusing on the value of mixed farming.

Open farm walks at the top three farms will be scheduled to take place in November and December 2024.

For further details about the 2024 Carbon Farmer of the Year competition, contact Rob Purdew, Carbon and Soil Advisor with the Farm Carbon Toolkit, at Rob.Purdew@farmcarbontoolkit.org.uk

For more information, visit www.farmcarbontoolkit.org.uk/carbon-farmer-of-the-year/

Notes to Editors

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.

The Farm Carbon Calculator uses the IPCC 2019 and UK GHG Inventory methodologies and is aligned with the GHG protocol agricultural guidance.  Recent development has allowed us to provide greater interoperability with other data platforms through our Report Export API and Carbon Calculation Engine API. This represents a step-change in the industry’s ability to provide trustworthy carbon footprints with transparent methodologies on platforms where farmers already collect data, thus reducing the data inputting onus on farmers. This new functionality has been warmly welcomed by supply chain businesses who are now using our Calculation Engine to support their customers without need for further data entry.

The Farm Carbon Calculator is used across the UK and on four continents with  global usage growing at around 20% per year.

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 8,000 farmers in the UK and beyond. To find out more visit www.farmcarbontoolkit.org.uk  

Carbon Farmer of the Year competition -update

Posted on May 25, 2023 by - Carbon Farmer of the Year

Earlier this year we at the Farm Carbon Toolkit launched our Carbon Farmer of the Year (CFOTY) competition. With this competition we will be recognising and championing farmers, sector organisations and businesses who are leading the way in adopting farming practices and developing new technologies which are helping to reduce farm emissions whilst optimising output. 

Back in 2015 we launched our Soil Farmer of the Year (SFOTY) competition which recognises those farmers who are going above and beyond to support improved soil health on their farms and to showcase all the good things which flow from that enhanced soil quality. This competition has been highly successful at celebrating incredibly forward thinking farmers and through it we have been able to share their methods, spreading their knowledge and normalising practices that may have previously seemed intangible to many farmers. The approaches these farmers have been demonstrating through the highly popular SFOTY farm walks have been a great opportunity to show to others that increasing soil health to safeguard our soils for future generations and future food production can be achieved whilst maintaining profit and production. 

We are confident that our new Carbon Farmer of the Year competition will do the same as the SFOTY, but with a focus on carbon reduction and carbon sequestration.

We are looking for those farmers and other businesses who are doing great things to reduce farm emissions and to store carbon in soil and non-crop biomass within resilient, biodiverse businesses. We believe the more we celebrate and recognise those farmers that are leading the way with regards to reducing emissions, increasing carbon capture and minimising reliance on imported energy the more we can spread this knowledge, create a new norm and share best practice across the industry. 

All the details to make nominations/apply and the entry form are available on our website here. Or you can go straight to the nomination/application form here.

Entries close on the 4th July and we will be announcing the winners at our annual Farm Carbon Toolkit Field Day on the 21st September.

Please note – the Soil Farmer of the Year competition will still be running alongside this new competition, and as always we will be announcing the winners at Groundswell in late June. 

Defra’s 2024 plans to support farmers in carbon footprinting

Posted on April 5, 2023 by - News

Farm carbon footprinting is in the spotlight again this week, following Defra’s plans to support farmers to carry out farm carbon footprinting from 2024, as well as to help harmonise the methodology for farm emissions calculation engines.

Although there is little detail behind Defra’s announcement, Farm Carbon Toolkit (FCT) very much welcomes the potential for greater financial and technical support for farmers to measure their emissions as a first step to identifying how best to reduce them and increase land sector removal of carbon into soils and on-farm biomass. FCT is already collaborating with other industry stakeholders to harmonise carbon calculation engines, including Dairy UK’s initiative, the Dairy Roadmap for Farm Carbon Accounting, which was announced earlier this month and looks forward to working further with Defra on methodology harmonisation in the coming months. 

Supporting farmers to understand their carbon footprint and to adopt farming practices to reduce emissions and store more carbon farmland is critical if we are to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. 

The IPCC’s latest AR6 Synthesis Report makes this clear. Rapid reduction in emissions is imperative—and yet global emissions are still heading in the opposite direction. The report is not an easy read, with the level of confidence in the negative – and devastating – forecasted impacts of climate change growing with every new IPCC report produced. What is very clear is that the continued extraction and use of fossil fuels is the largest contributor to overall emissions and, hence, global warming. Nevertheless agriculture’s overall contribution as a proportion of total emissions looks set to increase rapidly as we wean ourselves off fossil fuels.

On a more positive note, the IPCC report points to substantial mitigation and adaptation potential from options in agriculture, forestry and other land use that could be upscaled in the near term across most regions.

The IPCC report backs up FCT’s important work in assisting farmers and growers to reduce GHG emissions through adopting farming practices that increase biodiversity within the farming system, keep soil covered, improve soil health, and reduce reliance on artificial fertilisers and imported animal feed protein from areas affected by deforestation, as well as improving systems and business resilience – an important factor when considering the impact of climate change on UK food security. For example, it is now widely accepted that there is significant potential to increase the levels of atmospheric carbon stored in soils (approximately 9 tonnes/ha from increasing soil organic matter by 0.1%). 

However, we cannot rely on storing more carbon in soils and biomass without facing up to the imperative of doing all we can to urgently reduce emissions. This means ensuring farmers understand the sources of their GHG emissions on their farms, and that the practical advice on how best to reduce them is readily available, together with the necessary financial support to enable the transition.

To find out more on how the Farm Carbon Toolkit can help please contact us at info@farmcarbontoolkit.org.uk 

Written by Liz Bowles, Farm Carbon Toolkit’s CEO.