Tag: Scotland

Carbon Audits in Scotland – using The Farm Carbon Calculator

Posted on April 9, 2025 by - Calculator

Highland Cow

Thousands have already used The Farm Carbon Calculator in Scotland to generate a carbon footprint of their farm. You may be required to receive a Carbon Audit under the Whole Farm Plan guidance and be aware that the first Audits are to be completed by by 15 May 2025 – get started for free.

We’ve brought as much of the guidance you need together in one place so that farmers, growers and crofters in Scotland feel confident to get started.

Download Guide (pdf)

Free Carbon Audits

There are around 51,000 farms in Scotland, and agricultural land makes up almost 80% of the area. Not all farms will want, or need a carbon audit, but we want to ensure as many as possible can get one for free if they want, or from a consultant, using The Farm Carbon Calculator.

In Scotland the receipt of future payments from the Scottish Government are dependent partly on the requirement that farms generate what they call a Carbon Audit – or what we term your farm’s carbon footprint. You can use several tools to complete this task – provided they meet criteria set out in the guidance and are compliant with PAS2050:

  1. The Farm Carbon Calculator
  2. Agrecalc 
  3. Cool Farm Tool
  4. Solagro (JRC) Carbon Calculator.

Useful to note, if you think you already have a carbon footprint it is likely that this will be accepted by the SGRPID. These might be delivered to you as part of a  UK supply chain contract (via the dairy, someone you supply, or supermarket agreements), by the Farm Advisory Service, as part of the Farm Business Survey, or from the Soil Association Exchange. Ask them for a copy – it’s your farm data after all and you will need this in case of inspection later.

We think there are many good reasons why you might want to do a carbon footprint but lets look first at what the benefits are as set out in the Whole Farm Plan.

What is the Whole Farm Plan?

Carbon Audits are part of Whole Farm Plan (WFP) guidance. Most farmers in Scotland are by now familiar with the WFP. It is designed encourage a comprehensive view of your farm or croft which should allow you to assess current performance, identify growth opportunities, and align practices with Scotland’s climate and nature goals.

Looking towards 15 May 2028, farmers seeking to claim Basic Payment Scheme payments will be required to implement the following key activities and plans:

  1. Animal Health and Welfare Plan – reviewed annually
  2. Biodiversity Audit – reviewed every 5 years
  3. Carbon Audit – reviewed every 5 years
  4. Integrated Pest Management Plan – reviewed annually
  5. Soil Sampling of Region 1 land – every sampled field reviewed once every 5 years.

By 15 May 2025 all farms and crofts would need to have completed 2 out of the 5 audits. For all farms, one of these must be a carbon audit. We are working to ensure your carbon audit is one of the easier tasks to complete. Check the eligibility criteria in the guidance carefully to ensure you only complete audits which are required for you, and bear in mind the guidance can change. Read more

What the Rural Payments and Services webpage looks like.

At the time of this article in March 2025 we understand that the audits required for 2026 (presumed to be required by 15 May 2026) will be made known in summer 2025 and announced as part of the Agricultural Reform Programme route map to give you time to prepare. We will revise this information as we learn more.

What we know so far is that by 2028 at the latest, all businesses will need to have all plans and audits that are applicable to their business in place.

There is lots here to take in in the above, especially if you have not undertaken any of the above activities yet. We are here to help so make sure you ask us questions if you have any.

Shows upcoming actions and milestones as part of the Carbon Audit requirements of the Whole Farm Plan

Useful links – Whole Farm Plan

Whole Farm Plan guidance can change, or be amended in the annexes and ‘guidance updates’. We recommend you also read and become familiar with the available guidance at the following links:

Find a leading free tool to help

We know navigating these requirements can be challenging, but that’s where our team steps in. The Farm Carbon Calculator is free for farmers and we’re here to provide dedicated support to farmers and crofters whilst you complete your report. You can therefore get started with the tool yourself – and take control of this part of the process. 

The benefits of a carbon footprint

If you have read this far, it is likely that you already want to get to grips with a carbon footprint on your farm. However, we understand it can be frustrating to spend more time at the computer. Here are the benefits we have hear from farmers using our tool over the past 15 years – 

You will start to benefit as soon as you begin working with our tool. The calculator is used for all sorts of reasons:

  • Boost your interest in carbon – people want to understand greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and how they might be reduced. Combining 10 hectares once for example produces emissions of: 0.52 tCO2e, and this kind of information is readily available to you whilst you work on your report
  • Gain a unique view of your farm – often a fresh look at any business is a valuable exercise but you can also potentially make even more informed decisions
  • Create a baseline now for the future – it is likely that the earlier you footprint, the better prepared you will be for any future changes to guidance or otherwise
  • Be part of a positive narrative – more and more people are getting involved, and you can too. We think agriculture is ahead of the curve here.
  • Improve your business resilience – you may pinpoint cost-saving opportunities through resource efficiency
  • Someone asked you to – for example Meeting Carbon Audit standards as we have set out above. The Calculator is designed to be a problem solver!
Shows what information would usually be needed to carbon footprint a farm under the Whole Farm Plan Carbon Audit scheme on a croft.

Funding and support available

You will receive great advice from the Farm Advisory Service on their website, via email advice@fas.scot or telephone 0300 323 0161 to support your journey.

But you may also want assistance with the carbon audit particularly if your farm is complex, you don’t have time, or you just want someone to take care of it for you. 

There are a number of farm advisors we also support in Scotland who can help guide you through your footprint, or offer you recommendations based on your carbon audit. Check with us, or ask that your advisor uses The Farm Carbon Calculator and check their fees and the total cost to you. Email calculator@farmcarbontoolkit.org.uk to check.

If they are not sure about what tool might work best, put them in touch with us so we can offer them support. We have a range of plans available for farm consultants to use our software and give you great footprints at a low cost.

In order to receive funding for support it is usually a requirement that the advisors you contract should be Farm Business Advisory Service Scotland (FBAASS) accredited – so why not search the list available on the LANTRA website to find one near you: see list.

Receive funding for your Carbon Audit – Preparing for Sustainable Farming

We are pleased to see that funding is again available to help you under the Preparing for Sustainable Farming (PSF) programme as of February 2025. Previously it was understood that funding would be closed at this point to new applicants. 

Funding in this programme is expected to close in February 2026 and you will be able to claim for footprints completed in the 2025 calendar year. If you can claim, don’t delay in doing so. Read more

Check carefully the eligibility criteria for this funding which we have simplified slightly here:

  • £500 is available to fund eligible Carbon Audits
  • A new carbon audit can be funded every 3 years – which sits within the 5 years required for the whole farm plan
  • If you have a carbon audit but it is not of the required standard, or your farm has changed materially you should be able to make a new claim
  • Carbon audits can be claimed for that were completed in the 2025 calendar year. With claims being made by February 2026
  • When you use the Farm Carbon Calculator – either yourself, or you have a consultant prepare your audit – this should be reviewed by an FBAASS advisor and they should  give you recommendations to accompany your report that will help you reduce emissions.
  • If other funding becomes available you should not double claim.

Get started – checklist

Your Carbon Audit doesn’t have to be overwhelming use this checklist to help guide your decisions prior to getting started.

  • Get familiar with the Whole Farm Plan > read guidance
  • Check which audits are required, and by what dates > check up to date guidance. Carbon Audits are for all farms, but there may be others you would like to tackle first.
  • Check if you already have a valid Carbon Audit > if yes, you can stop here. 
  • See if you can receive funding > check eligibility
  • Decide if you want to complete the Carbon Audit yourself, or pay for help > why not create an account and login to check. You may be able to receive funded and paid for assistance either way.
  • Complete the Carbon Audit
    • Complete your own Carbon Audit > the rest of this guide will help
      • you can still send this to an advisor for recommendations 
    • Find an advisor who can help > Contact us or use LANTRA’s list.
      • check they use The Farm Carbon Calculator
      • check the cost to you.
  • Keep a copy of your Carbon Audit on file, or in our system. Should SGRPID inspect your audits you may need this to hand.
  • Ask, what next? Completing your Carbon Audit frees you up to look at other audits, but also may allow you to undertake funded soil analysis. 
    • Soil Analysis is a requirement on Region 1 farmland, and should include carbon. These results can be inputted into your report to make your footprint even more accurate. Read the WFP guidance on Soil Analysis, the PSF guidance around funding, and our very own Monitoring Soil Carbon guide too.

General suggestions

  • Most guidance suggests you should use the same carbon footprinting tool over time for consistent tracking. We’d agree – though don’t forget you can replicate, or complete a previous year in any calculator. Talk to us if you need help with this
  • Whichever tool you use, keep a good record of changes made based on your report
  • At the very least, keep a copy of your report for your records, as it is your hard work, and your data. Your Farm Carbon Calculator dashboard is a great place to keep your reports secure over time
  • Once you have a carbon audit look for or ask an advisor for actionable recommendations. You might like to start on our Farm Carbon Toolkit – a great place for guidance and case studies!
Michael Brown, Customer Service Officer at Farm Carbon Toolkit

Any questions? We’re here to help, contact Michael Brown, Customer Service Officer

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Carbon Farmer of the Year Farm Walk at Durie Farms – November 2023

Posted on December 4, 2023 by - Case Studies, Carbon Farmer of the Year, Insights

The 21st November 2023 came in as a bright and sunny day, in stark contrast to the near constant rain which had fallen for the previous weeks.

The occasion was the farm walk for FCT’s Carbon Farmer of the Year Competition on the winner’s farm – Doug Christie of Durie Farms, Fife. Durie Farms is a mixed farm combining arable and cattle enterprises, organic and non-organic as well as woodland.

Liz Bowles (Left) CEO of Farm Carbon Toolkit welcoming people to the farm walk

Before we set out on the walk, Doug introduced his farm and explained some of the practices he has adopted which earned him the title of Carbon Farmer of the Year.

Fundamentals include the incorporation of conservation agriculture (minimum till cultivations and more complex arable rotations including peas and legumes within the rotation as standard) and the integration of extensively managed cattle within the whole farm. Central to this has been regular soil analysis with records going back to 2006. These records include soil organic matter which means that Doug is able to track soil carbon changes over time too. Unusually for the time, Doug also measured soil bulk density  which makes carbon stocks estimates more accurate. Alongside measuring soil carbon stocks, Doug also keeps enterprise fuel allocation records which has allowed him to have a much better understanding of hot spot areas. Through doing this he was able to identify the high fuel usage associated with housing cattle in the winter. This knowledge together with his adoption of holistic grazing practices has enabled him to keep cattle out longer,  with some groups of cattle e.g. in calf heifers now not being housed at all.

Our first stop on the farm walk was the large heap of brushwood next to the farm lane (a result of woodland management) and a question posed to the walkers as to how best to deal with this. Burning the pile would release a lot of carbon dioxide, but would that be less than chipping the pile and then burning it as a fuel? Or what about leaving it to break down naturally and possibly combine with farmyard manure and use as a soil amendment?  Now we are starting to look at these things through a number of lenses, these are the sort of questions farmers are increasingly grappling with.

The first field we entered was growing a cover crop, established in mid – late August after a cereal crop.

Doug Christie  (on the right, spade in hand) describing the cover crop

Doug now makes up his own cover crop mixes using farm saved seeds when possible. The cover crop had really motored on since early September and was providing pretty good canopy cover, in flower and up to waist height.  This cover crop will be holding nutrients in the soil, keeping living roots in place and improving soil structure through the varied rooting depths of the different plants in the cover crop.  Doug puts cover crops in place wherever possible and, for cereal harvesting, uses a stripper header leaving straw to rot down and provide food for earthworms. This was evident when inspecting a soil pit where the number of worms was high – worms everywhere. In fact this field which had been harvested with a stripper header, and had been undersown with a grass clover mix, with cattle having been mob grazed across it a few weeks earlier. The cattle had removed some of the straw and helped to break down the rest, and on the day of the farm walk it was clear that the grass clover sward was coming away nicely. Testament to the improving soil health at Durie Farms is the fact that Doug sold his subsoiler some years ago- surplus to requirements!

Doug shared with the group that he has not used insecticides since 2003 and is now working closely with the James Hutton Institute to carry out research on his farm. He has a fantastic site to investigate the impacts of this decision on insect life on the farm.

Arriving at the in calf heifers as we walked across the farm, it was clear they were wondering if it was time to make their move for the day. 

In calf heifers curious to know what we were talking about

Donald Christie, Doug’s son commented that since moving to holistic grazing and generally daily moves the cattle have become much more biddable, and in the move to outdoor wintering the challenge has been to make sure that this group do not carry too much weight as they approach calving. They receive no supplementary feeding when on grass.  One of the group commented that since adopting holistic grazing cattle health has improved and that the growth rate of outwintered animals surpassed that of housed cattle the following spring.

The group asked Doug what he is doing to reduce his reliance on artificial N fertilisers, one of the hot spots for arable farmers. Through improving soil health and bringing pulses and legumes into his cropping rotation Doug has reduced his reliance on granular urea by 30% since 2009. Yields have gone down but net margin is up. When choosing inputs such as fertiliser it is worth noting that different branded products, produced in different parts of the world, may have very different emissions factors. At Farm Carbon Toolkit, we offer Calculator users the ability to choose the product they have used so an accurate figure for emissions will be included.

The group also tackled the topic of cattle and methane, with an acknowledgement of how complex this topic is. The box below discusses the reasons for looking at a better mechanism for accounting for methane, one of the shortest lived greenhouse gases and one which is produced by ruminants as an intrinsic function of rumen function. 

What is becoming clearer is that how cattle are managed will have an impact on their overall impacts on our environment. Certainly Doug is minimising their negative impacts, through minimising their consumption of foods which could be eaten by humans directly, minimising their use of other sources of emissions such as fertiliser and fuel and making sure that their grazing activity has a positive impact on the soils they stand on and sequestering as much carbon as possible in their wake.

Accounting for methane: GWP* and GWP100
GWP (Global Warming Potential) is a measure of how much impact a gas will have on warming the atmosphere. The most common method to evaluate the effect of different greenhouse gases (GHGs) is by comparing them over a 100-year lifetime; this is known as GWP100. This is the internationally agreed metric chosen under the Paris Agreement and the primary tool for emission reduction targets globally. 

Using GWP, it’s possible to compare the impact of different GHGs by converting them to their carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) value. The latest research suggests that using GWP100, biogenic methane emissions are 27 times more powerful than CO2; and nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions are 273 times more powerful. However, unlike CO2 and N2O gases that last for hundreds of years in the atmosphere, methane only lasts for an average of 12 years after which most of it is broken down. This means that using GWP100, the impacts of methane could be considered overestimated in the long-term, and underestimated in the short term. 

In an aim to better account for methane, in 2016, a team of researchers proposed a new metric, known as GWP* that works over a 20 year period. Over a 20 year period, emitting a tonne of methane today has 80 times more temperature impact than carbon dioxide. However, the new metric is also designed to reflect the warming impact of ongoing emissions of methane in relation to the current levels of that gas in the atmosphere. The theory is that, over time, ongoing emissions are not adding warming to the atmosphere, but merely replacing old emissions that have degraded. Essentially, GWP* focuses on changes in emissions rather than absolute emissions. This accounting approach has been gathering support within UK agriculture sector, however it does also face some criticism (example).

As we turned for home, and the beckoning hot drinks and cakes, conversation turned to reducing the negative impacts of growing potatoes and the potential for woodland to sequester carbon into trees. On the topic of reducing the harms associated with growing potatoes there is a clear role for keeping living roots in the soil for as much of the year as possible, but to date no alternative has been found to the punishing soil management routine required to grow potatoes, although research is underway.

Liz explaining to the group how woodland is accounted for in the Farm Carbon Calculator

Doug has 50ha of woodland across the farm, with different areas having been in place from 10 -240 years. As his summary carbon footprint report shows, the woodland at Durie Farms alongside soil carbon sequestration offset the business GHG emissions last year. Of the total sequestration, woodland contributed around 50%. It is worth noting that the carbon sequestration associated with woodland depends on the growth rate of the tree. The Woodland Carbon Code has developed “look up tables” for this which the Farm Carbon Calculator  has incorporated into the sequestration area of the Calculator. For users, providing accurate information on the age of the trees as well as their varieties will enable a more accurate assessment of the scale of sequestration to be given. A rule of thumb is that most trees sequester only small amounts of carbon for the first decade or so of life. From the age of around 15 – 30 years carbon sequestration is at its maximum. After that age growth tends to slow down and with it carbon sequestration.

Doug is continually trying new ideas, with pasture cropping a new initiative he has ‘frustratingly’ tried this year. Doug’s long term membership of BASE UK  has supported him in his quest for adopting new and more sustainable farming practices. A quick look at the BASE UK website revealed a number  of fascinating events coming up in the next month including this one:

14/12/23 BASE-UK Member Nick Wall will present his review of the study tour recently taken by 15 members to visit Frederic Thomas and other BASE France members in November 2023 – it wasn’t all good food and drink – there was some learning involved! 

Back in the cattle yard (not in use yet) we finished with a round up of questions, answers and general discussion.

Thank you to our hosts, the Christie Family, for a memorable farm walk and great hospitality.