Tag: ghg emissions

Groundswell reflections: how close can agriculture get to being carbon positive?

Posted on July 18, 2024 by - Insights, News

Groundswell

by Liz Bowles, CEO

Groundswell this year was as exciting as ever, with so many excellent sessions and people to catch up with and meet for the first time. 

There was much interest in how farmers and growers can benefit from the new markets for carbon, biodiversity net gain and nutrient neutrality to name but three, but to my mind, there was far less attention on how the sector can actually reduce the emissions associated with producing food itself.

For me, this is critical as we have to find a way to reduce the greenhouse gases we push into our atmosphere, as well as removing some of the historical emissions already there, if we are to reduce the worst impacts of climate change.

There is, however, a central question for our food system which is: What level of emissions are inevitable from the production of food which is essential for humanity? The Climate Change Committee has come up with a view on this in their 2020 UK agricultural policy for net zero report, which suggests a road map for saving 64% in the annual emissions from agriculture compared to 2017 levels when UK agriculture was responsible for around 58 MtCO2e (12% of total UK  emissions). On closer inspection of the figures though, the actual savings in emissions from agriculture are set at around 21 MtCO2e / year, with the remaining savings to come from forestry, changes to our diet and the production of energy crops instead of food.

This is set out below:

The specific actions suggested for each of these areas are set out below:

  • Tree planting on 30,000 hectares per year
  • Use 10% of UK farmland  for agroforestry (no distinction made between agroforestry and hedgerows)
  • Restore at least 55% of peatland area by 2050. (For lowland peat lands this means rewetting or paludiculture to reduce emissions and for uplands this means rewetting).
  • Increases in low-carbon farming practices for soils and livestock (no detail provided)
  • Increase the area of farmland devoted to energy crops to 23,000 ha per year

From this list, the low carbon farming practices interest me in terms of how their adoption will enable an annual reduction of 10MtCO2e per year to occur (~25% of 2022 UK agricultural emissions). At Farm Carbon Toolkit we work directly with farmers and growers to adopt these practices and changes to current management processes. Typically the areas to focus on include:

  • Planting cover crops
  • Changing crop rotation
  • Transitioning to no/min till where possible
  • Growing new crops
  • Integrated pest management
  • Adopting rotational grazing
  • Planting herbal leys

Across all these practices, there should be a focus on reducing the use of artificial nitrogen fertilisers and purchased livestock feed (especially those including imported ingredients) as both these inputs carry a high level of associated emissions.

Many of these practices can also be considered to be part of the suite of “regenerative farming principles”. Adoption of more regenerative farming practices is growing steadily, but for many farmers, the key question surrounds the financial viability of their adoption when margins are so tight. A recent report commissioned by the Farming for Carbon and Nature Group and funded by the Natural England Environment Investment Readiness Fund (NEIRF) sets out the financial and climate impact of adoption of more regenerative farming practices and systems and includes partial budget information on the financial impact of adoption in England with support from SFI where relevant.

Regenerative farming practices and their financial viability, including external support available in England, where available

This chart clearly shows that with the inclusion of SFI support, many of the practices generally considered to be regenerative are likely to deliver a similar margin than more conventional practices in these areas. The area where more support is needed is in the adoption of more complex arable rotations including pulses and fertility building leys, where even with appropriate SFI payments, the margins from shorter more degenerative rotations are likely to be more profitable. We are a member of the Nitrogen Climate Smart Consortium which is supporting the increased production of pulses and legumes in the UK together with their use as animal feeds to address the need to reduce the use of artificial fertilisers and imported animal feedstuffs. This project will support farmers to do this through farmer field trials as well as the introduction of new technology for on-farm pulses processing.  You can find out more about this project and get involved by following this link.

In summary, I am fairly confident that UK agriculture can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 10% through the adoption of low-carbon farming practices. Indeed through some of the practical work with farmers in which FCT is involved, we are seeing higher levels of emission reductions being achieved within businesses with little or no change in farm output and in many cases increased profitability and business resilience. The element which is mostly missing is the confidence and knowledge to make the necessary changes and knowing where to start.

At FCT we provide a (free for farmers and growers) Farm Carbon Calculator to allow businesses to understand their starting point, a set of tools within our Toolkit to assist businesses to make those chances and a team of expert advisors to talk to.

You can always make contact with us by email info@farmcarbontoolkit.org.uk or by calling us on 07541 453413. We look forward to hearing from you.

Harmonisation of Carbon Accounting Tools for Agriculture – Webinar Replay

Posted on September 19, 2024 by - Calculator, News

Watch a replay of this webinar held on the 11th September 2024 where representatives of the three major farm carbon calculators shared more details of the work they are doing together: Work to support UK agriculture to measure GHG emissions using the most up-to-date and accurate tools possible, harmonising the methodologies and outputs of their carbon calculation tools.

The three major farm carbon calculators featured in the Defra Report Harmonisation of Carbon Accounting Tools for Agriculture – SCF0129 who were Farm Carbon Toolkit, Cool Farm Alliance Community Interest Company and Agrecalc Limited – announced a collaboration earlier in 2024 by signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), intended to harmonise the methodologies used in calculating the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture.

….. more webinar information to follow soon …..

Webinar Q&A

We received a great list of questions during the webinar event and teams from the various calculators will look to address those queries in due course.

Media contact: Kandia Appadoo (comms@coolfarmtool.org)

Three major farm carbon calculators outline a roadmap to harmonisation

Posted on June 19, 2024 by - News

The three major farm carbon calculators featured in the Defra Report Harmonisation of Carbon Accounting Tools for Agriculture – SCF0129 have announced a collaboration by signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), intended to harmonise the methodologies used in calculating the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture.

Farm Carbon Toolkit, Cool Farm Alliance Community Interest Company and Agrecalc Limited have reached an agreement to work together to support UK agriculture to measure GHG emissions using the most up-to-date and accurate tools possible, harmonising the methodologies and outputs of their carbon calculation tools.

The three companies are looking forward to their joint work on this major challenge, to fulfil the requirements outlined in the comprehensive Report, compiled by ADAS throughout 2023. It is generally agreed that the overarching goal should be to reduce the overall greenhouse gas emissions  from agriculture through resource efficiency improvements,  optimising production practices and mitigating environmental impacts.

Liz Bowles, Farm Carbon Toolkit CEO, said:

We are not seeking to reach a point where all three calculators will produce the same answer for any given dataset. As the Defra report put it, “ there is no single ‘right’ answer”. Rather we are striving to make it possible for users to fully understand why different calculators produce different answers.

We plan to align with the Science-Based Targets initiative Forestry Land and Agriculture Guidance (SBTi FLAG) and draft Greenhouse Gas Protocol Land Sector Removals Guidance (GHGp LSRG) through our collaborative actions. This commitment underscores our dedication to maintaining high-quality standards and ensuring environmental sustainability in our operations, and in calculation outputs.

Scott Davies, Agrecalc CEO, said:

It is intended that we agree on a common set of data sources which all three calculators will use. All calculators can go beyond these baseline requirements, and all parties to this MOU will retain their commercial independence. We will also involve the relevant government and other organisations’ teams with our work plan as we develop it.

This collaborative approach supports a joint understanding of industry requirements and advancing consistency in our tools and methodologies. Our goal is collaboration with industry, trade bodies, and fellow calculator providers in the UK and internationally, so that we can actively contribute to the development of more consistent approaches to on-farm carbon calculation.

Richard Profit, Cool Farm Alliance CEO, said:

We are looking forward to this collaboration, as it will help align methodologies where that makes sense and that will especially allow us to look into new areas that require attention. How we then incorporate the new information in our calculators will vary from calculator to calculator as a result of our different base approaches.

We will also ensure that the tools include the latest and most robust scientific findings into their frameworks and roadmaps.

The calculators are seeking that this joint work become the “agreed way” and at some point, become a minimum required standard for all calculators to adopt. The companies will engage in consultations with Defra, Welsh Government, Scottish Government, and Northern Ireland Government to reach a practical and realistic form of ongoing validation of their harmonisation work.

Methodologies or other harmonisation solutions developed as a direct result of the MOU will be published transparently, or will otherwise be made available for others to use.

Although this MOU currently only involves the three major companies in this space, the group is open to other calculators joining the coalition so long as they publicly provide transparency in their Calculator methodologies. 

We will be holding a joint webinar on the 11th September 2024 at 1pm – 2pm to share more details of the work we are doing together. Please register here if you would like to join us

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 

Media contact: Rachel Hucker (rachel.hucker@farmcarbontoolkit.org.uk; 07541 453413) 

Agrecalc, a carbon footprint tool developed by combining practical expertise with world-class agricultural science, is a precise instrument that offers both breadth and depth of on-farm and through-the-supply-chain calculations of GHG gas emissions.

Agrecalc is the largest source of collated farm benchmark data from thousands of farms, having been used as the designated tool to deliver carbon audits under various schemes since 2016. It is recognised as the preferred carbon calculator in many of the emerging government programmes.

With a mission to increase efficiency and business viability of food production, the scientists, consultants, and developers who work on Agrecalc, strive to constantly upgrade the calculator according to the most up-to-date available research results and recommendations.

Media contact: Aleksandra Stevanovic, Head of Marketing; (aleksandra.stevanovic@agrecalc.com; 07551 263 407)

Cool Farm Alliance Community Interest Company is a science-led, not-for-profit membership organisation (community interest company) that owns, manages, and improves the Cool Farm Tool and cultivates the leadership network to advance regenerative agriculture at scale.

For over fifteen years, the Cool Farm Alliance has worked to put knowledge in the hands of farmers and empower the full supply chain to understand and support agro-ecological restoration by providing a respected, standardised calculation engine to measure and report on agriculture’s impact on the environment. The Cool Farm Tool has established widely endorsed, science-based metrics for water, climate, and biodiversity, supported in 17 languages and used in more than 150 countries around the world.

Cool Farm Alliance members share the need for a respected, consistent, standardised, independent calculation engine and have joined the Alliance to ensure the Cool Farm Tool meets this need, now and in the future.  To find out more visit https://coolfarm.org/

Media contact: Kandia Appadoo (comms@coolfarmtool.org)

What are Dung Beetles?

Posted on May 20, 2024 by - Insights, News

Dung beetles are fascinating creatures that play an essential role in breaking down dung, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and providing vital ecosystem services such as improving pastures, conditioning soils, and reducing parasitic burdens on our livestock. 

What are the types of dung beetle?

There are three basic groups of dung beetles: dwellers, tunnellers, and rollers. Dwellers live and reproduce within the dung, tunnellers create channels underneath the dung pat pulling dung through the soil and storing within the tunnels to eat and lay their eggs, rollers roll dung balls away and bury them underground.

Where can you find dung beetles?

Dung beetles are found on every continent except Antarctica. Their habitats range from desert to farmland to forest, owing their entire existence to dung from an equally wide range of animals. You’ll find most dung beetles in or around dung pats from herbivores that typically pass undigested plant material as well as liquid. Adult dung beetles tend to feed on the more liquid portion of the dung pat and dung beetle larvae will feed on the more solid portion. Hence, it’s important for the animals depositing dung to have a diet containing lots of fibre.

Dung beetles in the UK

There are around 60 species of dung beetle in the UK belonging to the tunneller and dweller groups – rollers are found in the warmer climate of the southern hemisphere. Some dung beetles are active during the day whereas some fly at night. Just like humans, dung beetles have preference when it comes to sniffing out food (dung). Some prefer dung from specific animals, some prefer dried dung as opposed to fresh and some are even picky when it comes to the location of dung within a field, however, mostly are generalists and will reside in any they can find.

What are the benefits of dung beetles?

It has been suggested that dung beetles can save the cattle industry around £367 million a year.

How?

Firstly, they increase soil nutrients. Fresh dung contains nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous; dung beetles eat, bury, and release these nutrients for the benefit of the surrounding soil biology, improving soil fertility and soil structure through channelling and drawing down organic matter. This can reduce reliance on fertiliser and makes much better use of our manures.

Secondly, dung beetles reduce pasture fouling. When dung isn’t removed from the field, the grass underneath it will die and the grass surrounding it will be unpalatable to livestock. If you scale this up, it removes a huge area for grazing as well as wasting an abundance of nutrients.

Thirdly, dung beetles are excellent at reducing pest flies from the activities of mites which are transported on the beetles’ bodies. The value of these organisms can be identified through reduced parasites on your livestock that ultimately impact milk yield and liveweight gains due to energy expended by the livestock to defend themselves or fight against infection. In both cases, dung beetles reduce survival of flies and parasites through competition of resources. 

Why are dung beetle populations in decline?

Unfortunately, despite the benefits of dung beetles, they are in decline due to the intensification of livestock systems – use of pesticides and anthelmintics. During the grazing season, dung pats could be broken down in a matter of days but instead, many lie rotting for a long time (and producing more methane emissions).

How can we encourage dung beetle populations?

Provision of dung is vital. If we’re able to outwinter even a fraction of our stock it provides a food resource all year round, attracting a more diverse array of dung beetle species.

Feeding livestock a more fibrous diet i.e. moving away from a grain-based diet can also help as it’s important to provide that partially undigested fibrous material.

Finally, long-acting anthelmintics can cause catastrophic loss of dung beetle populations. With veterinary support, frequent weighing of livestock and spot-treating animals  offers a more sustainable way of reducing anthelmintic use, reducing the wormer-resistance in intestinal parasites, and protecting dung beetle populations. 

How can we find out more about dung beetles?

There’s a wealth of information online about dung beetles, but to really get down to the detail, Farm Carbon Toolkit  is holding a two-day conference, in partnership with leading vets, dairy cooperative First Milk and Somerset dairy company Yeo Valley, on Tuesday 11 and Wednesday 12 June at Yeo Valley’s Holt Farm near Blagdon, south of Bristol. Event details and registration can be found here

How to avoid ‘double counting’ your carbon

Posted on March 21, 2024 by - Calculator, News

Carbon accounting is a fast-moving space, and here at FCT, keeping on top of best practices is one of our top priorities. We commission regular external reviews of all our emissions factors to make sure we’re as compliant and up-to-date as possible. And yet even with the best data available, there’s always the possibility of human error (we all do it!) cropping up in a carbon report. 

One area we’re particularly keen to address is how to avoid ‘double counting’ when it comes to farming footprints. This refers to counting the same carbon/CO2e in different places, often (but not always) in the same report. 

For example, you might record all your freight and logistics fuel use in the ‘Fuels’ section of our Calculator, only to duplicate the entry under the ‘Distribution’ section. This would result in counting the same emissions twice, artificially inflating the total emissions figure. 

These errors can be subtle and easy mistakes to make, so it’s worth reading on to find out how to avoid them and embrace best practices.

How is double counting possible?

Our Carbon Calculator has many different emissions factors that you can record, reflecting the wide variety of needs and business profiles in modern farming. Because of the need for informative metrics and KPIs, our Calculator sometimes offers the option to record an emission or offset in more than one section. 

You can therefore choose to either record all of the carbon in one section, or to split it out for better insight in your final report. For example, you may want to be able to see the amount of fuel used in farming operations vs. the fuel used in the distribution of goods. Being able to record the carbon in more than one place is crucial to business insight, but it does introduce the risk of error. 

If we want to use these informative metrics, then it’s important to be aware of when you might double-count your carbon. 

Where in the Calculator might I be double counting?

We’ve listed below some of the most common areas where double counting may occur in our Calculator. For each one we’ve given an example of how it occurs, and the best practice in order to avoid it. 

Animal Feeds – Home grown vs. Bought in 

If you are growing your own animal feed on-farm, then you don’t need to account for this in the ‘Livestock’ section. To do so would overestimate your emissions. The Livestock section is only for feeds that are specifically bought in.

To avoid the double count: Make sure that anything recorded as a feed in the Livestock section is a bought-in feed. If not, it doesn’t need to be counted there!

Materials vs. Inventory

The Materials section of our Calculator allows you to record a wide variety of items that are used in construction and repair work. Our Inventory section, on the other hand, is there to record larger capital items such as new outbuildings or farm machinery. This difference is key, as any items within the Inventory section will have their carbon impact depreciated over a period of 10 years.

It’s also possible to record your own custom building projects inside the Inventory section. For example, you might choose to record all the materials associated with a new outbuilding. This might be done so that you can achieve a more precise footprint for a non-standard construction. 

Where materials are purchased for running or regular repairs of existing installations, record these in the Materials section.

To avoid the double count: Make sure you’re not recording any custom-build projects in both Materials and Inventory. They only need to be recorded in one of these sections!

Sequestration – Double Counting Offsets 

If you have previously sold any carbon offsets, for example through soil organic carbon sequestration, then you should not count the offset in your report. To do so would be an example of double counting as the benefits are no longer attributable to your farm business. 

To avoid the double count: Make sure you’re only recording potential sequestration that hasn’t been sold or accounted for elsewhere. 

Sequestration – Double Counting potential sequestration

If you have entered an area of land under the sequestration option: “Soil Organic Matter” or “Soil Organic Carbon” (using information from soil sampling), you should not also enter those areas of land under other sequestration options (such as Countryside Stewardship Schemes, even if the land is receiving payment for that scheme). Direct soil sampling is preferable in this scenario. Similarly, whilst in practice you can “stack” the payments you receive from stewardship grants, you must only enter areas of land for sequestration under one potential sequestration option (so if “My field” is 5ha, I can enter soil sampling data from those 5ha OR the fact that they are under a Countryside Stewardship Scheme).

To avoid the double count: Include each field area under only one potential ‘Sequestration’ option.

Fuel Use – Distribution vs. Farming Operations 

If you want to split out your fuel use into distribution and farming operations, you have the option to record these separately. Any farm fuel use such as red diesel can be recorded under ‘Fuels’. Any fuel used in moving goods can be put under ‘Distribution’. 

To avoid the double count: We recommend splitting out fuel use between ‘Fuels’ (i.e. farm operations) and ‘Distribution’.

The Exceptions

As with all good rules, there are some apparent exceptions:

  • you CAN add multiple crops that have been grown on the same area of land in the same year (but only include those that have been harvested or terminated within the reporting period). 

A Day in the Life – Michael Brown, Calculator Customer Service Officer

Posted on October 28, 2024 by - Insights, News

A little challenge every day

Chances are, if you’re interested in measuring the carbon footprint of your farm you know a bit about what my job entails. I’m here to support you and help more and more farmers measure the carbon footprint of their farm. Each day, I’m immersed in both the challenges and rewards of what this involves:

We get it – carbon footprinting a farm can be hard, every farm is different, time is short and sometimes we all face problems fitting the farm information we have into an online carbon calculator.

Rising to the challenge

Behind our calculator is an approachable team who benefit from a two-way process where we help you and the more we do this, the more we learn and can improve the calculator in the long term.

We put together online resources; we generate and record ideas which guide ongoing research into methodologies of calculating GHG emissions in agriculture; and we contribute to the development and testing of our software.

When we develop, and when we test – we’re looking to see if things are getting better – and since starting in April 2024 we’ve already seen some great improvements rolled out to the calculator. My role contributes toward this on an average day.

Starting the Day: Checking in with the users

The day kicks off with a review of support requests from users across the UK and farms around the world. Our users vary widely, from small family farms to large agricultural enterprises, and their technical needs are just as diverse. Questions cannot be predicted but range from understanding how to input specific data into the calculator to interpreting their carbon footprint results.

I love interacting with those farmers taking the important step of calculating a footprint. There are many reasons for doing this – and all are inspiring, so it is great to hear from those involved. By solving problems or helping guide users my small but crucial role builds our understanding of carbon data. 

Mid-Morning: Developing resources for sustainable agriculture

A big part of my role is creating and updating online resources that help users maximize the calculator’s potential. I’ll work on developing these resources – which you can view in our FAQ’s, downloadable resources, instructional videos, or during training sessions. 

We think many farmers work long hours and appreciate a well-organized, easy-to-navigate guide that helps self-starters make the most of the Calculator – we believe it should be possible to use the tool yourself and feel that satisfaction of having achieved something.

Afternoon: Finding a solution for businesses or environmental professionals

The afternoon usually involves working closely with our Calculator Manager and other team members to ensure the Farm Carbon Calculator continues to deliver for our professional and commercial users. 

We rely on the legion of professionals, organisations, and partners who pay to use our software through licences, our excellent API, or in other ways to reach ever more farmers. Their fees support the work we do in all senses and this is clear in all our approaches to commercial work.

Staying informed in this area is critical for our relevance as the opportunities for us to help those working in carbon management and agricultural sustainability are constantly evolving.

With Lizzy Parker, Calculator Manager, at FCT’s Annual Field Day 2024

Wrapping up: Reflecting on progress and user feedback

Toward the end of the day, I might be reviewing feedback from users on recent updates or features, and discussions from the morning. Positive feedback is always motivating, and constructive suggestions are tracked to help us improve.

Without farmers and others working hard on their footprints and their sustainability I either wouldn’t have a job, or wouldn’t have the inspiration to know what to do next. With that in mind – throughout the day you can reach me at the end of the phone or on email – so give me a call. 

If you are an agricultural professional or large organisation you may want to see the services available for you, book a demo with us, or let me know if you want to learn more. Everyone else using the tool – just get started, create an account, or get in touch. You can reach us Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm on calculator@farmcarbontoolkit.org.uk 

A Day in the Life of…James Pitman, Calculator Development Officer

Posted on April 17, 2024 by - Insights, News

The day-to-day responsibilities of a carbon calculator development officer are a little more sedentary than those of our farmers or my advisory colleagues, but the intricacies of the job mean my life is far from mundane.

My primary objective is to continuously work on refining and enhancing our carbon calculator, ensuring it remains an accurate, trusted, and invaluable tool for UK farmers. 

A significant portion of my time is dedicated to the core emissions factors that underpin the calculator. This can mean verifying or updating our existing factors, researching new factors, or addressing the requests from users and advisors about factors they want on the calculator. In the last couple months I have been working closely on the Version 1.6.0 update to the calculator, which required a comprehensive review of all the emissions factors we use. This was a formidable task, and I have spent countless hours scouring through spreadsheets, deep in research papers, and having lively video calls with the team and our software developers. For all this work we have been able to add great functionality to the calculator and made really exciting plans for what is in the pipeline (no spoilers!), so the toil has paid off and I am very satisfied with the extent of new data and functionality we have been able to add in such a short window of time.

Since starting with FCT in December 2023, I have also been fortunate enough to help in the creation of the Equine Carbon Calculator, an industry-leading initiative aimed at quantifying emissions from the equine sector. During this development process you could have found me doing a myriad of tasks, from researching how the emissions would vary between different horse breeds, to calculating the materials needed for stable buildings and their embedded emissions, or beta-testing the new website and calculator. The opportunity to be involved with the Equine Carbon Calculator was fantastic and I have been thrilled to see how many reports have been built in it since it went live in March 2024.

The enthusiasm and passion FCT and its community have for sustainable agriculture is inspiring, and as a new member of the company I have never felt so welcome and excited about a new job. I hope that my work with the calculator team will create an efficient and effective tool for you all, and with that I am going to dive back into the research papers!

A Day in the Life of… Liz Bowles, Chief Executive

Posted on January 11, 2024 by - Insights, News

Being Chief Exec of the Farm Carbon Toolkit is a privilege. I have a team of committed, enthusiastic and supremely knowledgeable people working with me who are dedicated to supporting farmers to understand their farm carbon footprint and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase carbon sequestration, whilst maintaining thriving, biodiverse businesses.  

We are a relatively small organisation, but I always love it when people tell me that they keep coming across the team as this means we are being noticed and, even more importantly, that people like what we are doing. Last week was just such an example. We were involved in a number of sessions at the Oxford Farming Conference including showcasing Farm Net Zero Cornwall and the great strides farmers involved in the group are making towards Net Zero. We also featured in the premiere of the film “Six Inches of Soil”  and were mentioned by a number of other speakers at the conference whom we work with.

There is no such thing as a typical day for me.

I do start off with a list of what I would like to get done during the day and highlight the tasks which are important/ urgent, but then things happen, such as people making contact with me to discuss exciting new activities with which we could get involved. It is just about impossible to know which opportunities are the best to take forward from the great number which come our way every day, but my watch word is to pursue working with like-minded organisations whose first instinct is to think about what they can do to support reducing the greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and who, like us, believe that farmers are supremely well-placed to remove carbon from the atmosphere through how they farm.

Over the last few months I have been developing relationships with other popular Carbon Calculators to enable us to work together where possible to harmonise Calculator methodologies, so that farmers’ Carbon Calculator results will be more comparable in future. This, I believe, will increase the uptake of their use. We know that the requirement to provide information on farm emissions and removals will increase over time and we are committed to continually improving our Calculator so that farmers who are taking action to reduce their carbon footprint can see this fully reflected in their reporting. We are also committed to providing our Calculator directly to farmers for free.