Calculating and reducing your carbon footprint webinar Q&A

On 25 November 2020, Michael and Tony Ball from Coton Wood Farm, along with Becky Willson from The Farm Carbon Toolkit, explored how to measure and reduce your carbon footprint and make your farm more efficient. Here you can find a full list of the questions, along with the answers, taken from the webinar.

If  the arable farms are measuring their carbon before they sell the crop is that carbon attributed to the primary producer or the dairy that buys the wheat or soya or do both have to have the same carbon on their books?

No, as some of the emissions associated with the crop will be processing and transport which wouldn't be attributed to the producing farmer. Where we need better information is for different countries of origin, so for example you would be able to see the difference between buying wheat / barley from a neighbouring farm vs it coming from a longer distance away - currently we can't differentiate.

There are so many ways to assess carbon footprint on farm, how do you see this working going forward as different tools deliver different results, in order to gauge how the dairy industry as a whole is performing?

We are on a retail contract so are assessed through that but no sequestration is taken into account? - there are developments currently taking place that will make the carbon footprinting approach more consistent - all tool developers are keen that there is this consistency. However we need some action from Defra and others to ensure that all calculators are able to take account of sequestration in a scienfically robust and relevant way. This will come, but we aren't there yet!

Is net zero possible?

Yes but it will require significant change in practice, and inclusion of sequestration. 

NZ figures suggest beef and sheep farms there are in many cases very close to carbon neutral.  Is that the case here, or are they measuring it differently?

They are measuring it differently using the adapted figure for methane. 

Can you compare farm vs farm if the other farm is using a different carbon footprinting company/model?

No, the best person to compare with is yourself, if you are going to compare between farms they must be using the same tool otherwise its like comparing apples and pears.

Could using different grass leys be viable in reducing nitrous oxide emissions? For example using more clover within the mix to reduce reliance on artificial fertilisers to restore N due to the legume being nitrogen fixing?

Yes this is something that is definitely on the list as a beneficial practice. 

Is there any work being done on carbon footprint per calorie? i.e. to make it more consumer relevant?

Yes we need to ensure that consumers get the information in a way which makes sense to them, however we have to be very careful in the way that this data is developed, otherwise we get more of the same around meat / milk bad and non livestock products are good. There is some work being led by Rothamsted research which is linking carbon footprint to nutrient density - this is a very interesting new area of work and allows consumers to link environmental impact to nutrients.