Defra recently published the results of its research project, ‘Harmonisation of Carbon Accounting Tools for Agriculture’, to answer some of the NFU’s questions on the differences between calculators.
While this was a short-term project, it did clarify several issues:
- All of six calculators tested were able to provide farmers and growers with a baseline understanding of emissions and then help the business think about the next practical steps.
- No one calculator consistently gave the highest or lowest emissions when looking across different production systems and when carbon sequestration was included the differences between calculators increased.
- Calculators give different results for a number of reasons. For example, the tools ask for varying amounts of data. Generally the less data a calculator asks for, the more assumptions it has to make but then it’s easier to fill in.
- In addition, farm businesses can be very complex e.g. have different enterprises, use contractors etc, so it’s very difficult for tools to capture all this diversity.
Next steps
The NFU will be speaking to Defra about its next steps to act on the recommendations from the project because they point to some obvious improvements which need to be made, fundamentally around standards and guidance.
Members are interested in doing a GHG audit for their own businesses or have been asked to do one for their supply chain. Some also have their eye on the possibility of carbon markets being a new source of private sector funding and want to get ready if and when this happens.
As the legal requirements for large companies to report GHGs continues to develop, so the attention on data and audits grows. This is not just happening in the UK but across the world and all sectors of the economy. And some of our competitors are already getting in on the act. Ireland’s Origin Green sustainability programme has carried out over 350,000 GHG audits to date.
“The NFU has had and continues to have several irons in the fire on the road to getting more information on, and support for farmers and growers with GHG (carbon) footprinting.”
NFU Senior Climate Change adviser Dr Ceris Jones
The NFU has had and continues to have several irons in the fire on the road to getting more information on, and support for farmers and growers with GHG (carbon) footprinting:
- Defra’s update to the ATP announced earlier this year signalled that government is continuing to think about how to ‘increase adoption of tools such as for carbon audits’.
- NFU members have tested some of the freely available calculators. You can read more about Somerset broiler producer and NFU Poultry Board member Simon Barton's experience on NFUonline.
- An ELMs Test & Trial on net zero where NFU members were testing options and/or giving their opinion on how GHG calculations could be supported under future ELMs or wider ATP.
- You might also be interested in reading about the work of the British Farm Data Council of which the NFU is a member. This group has agreed on principles of farm data governance which include the principle that ‘Your data is your data’.
We’ll be reporting on the results of a new NFU GHG footprinting survey very soon, so watch this space.
We'd love to hear your experiences of GHG footprinting or any views you might have on this subject. You can email [email protected] or members of the Environment and climate can comment on this article.
