Calculating carbon emissions

[Hampton]

It appears that the biggest challenge to conventional agriculture in the future is not brexit or glyphosate getting banned, but the steady shift in the food consumption of people in the developed world (those with money and choice) from meat eating diets to vegan and plant based food.
I had initially dismissed the veganism movement as a fad, but with the recent paper on climate change,and then one of my friends making this video for the economist (he’s a farmer’s son, highly intelligent, and a London dweller) it has brought things into focus for me.

It was actually shocking that someone could make such an unbalanced film, and it runs like an advertorial for the Dutch guys business.

Anyway, my point is we need solid facts and it’s much harder to defend an entire global industry than it is to defend our own businesses or region.
Therefore it would be very intersting to find out the carbon emissions on my own farm as it could be used a tangible evidence that I am not destroying the World for my own gains!
So, has anyone actually calculated their whole farm business data? Was it accurate? Is it replicatable across different businesses?
I’m quite keen to undertake this, so is research funding available or is anyone actually doing a Nuffield or a PHD on this?
Looking at the bigger picture, if we can carbon audit and we are found not to be the scourge we are claimed to be, then surely that is one of Mr Gove’s “public goods” and we could be rewarded accordingly. At the very least it could help with efficiency and focus our minds on our businesses.
So, is this madness, or is it as important as I think it is?

 

[Fish]

Any good
https://www.farmcarbontoolkit.org.uk/carbon-calculator

 

[sidjon]

 

[Hampton]

Any good
https://www.farmcarbontoolkit.org.uk/carbon-calculator

Ive been looking into these over the last few weeks, but I have not heard much about them (apart from what's on their website) and it troubles me to enter so much business data into an online farm calculator that seems to be cloud based.

 

[Hampton]

With respect, that's just burying your head in the sand and saying our nonsense film is true and theirs isn't, just theirs is from a more respected source. Either way, it's not going to persuade anyone that we are right like hard evidence would.

 

[sidjon]

With respect, that's just burying your head in the sand and saying our nonsense film is true and theirs isn't, just theirs is from a more respected source. Either way, it's not going to persuade anyone that we are right like hard evidence would.

so their source is a leading vegan, I don't think their source has pick the parts to make it seem vegans will save the world? UN data was floored but people keep using it to compare us to transport.

 

[Hampton]

so their source is a leading vegan, I don't think their source has pick the parts to make it seem vegans will save the world? UN data was floored but people keep using it to compare us to transport.

Sorry, I wasn’t saying that theirs is correct, just the economist is a respected source whereas the NZ you posted doesn’t seem to be backed by the same gravitas

 

[Bill the Bass]

I remember picking a copy of the Economist in about 2007. The cover story was about the imminent commodities boom and how farmers and farming was going to clean up -financially speaking.

I’m still waiting.....

 

[Dalos]

@Chips is very knowledgable about this and is working to get sequestration of grassland added into the calculation.

 

[The_Swede]

@Hampton I am on a DAg programme (on-farm research based PhD equivalent) through Aberystwyth, has been a brilliant experience thus far. My research while not directly focused on GHG emissions per-se is constantly referring across to this growing issue that you correctly highlight.

As things stand veganism is not the answer as however it is skewed a large expansion in such diets results in grassland being ploughed out and so huge existing stores of carbon being released. However, as the above videos show this is not to say that all and in fact probably the majority of grassland systems are themselves capturing GHG's in any meaningful on-going sense (once you factor in methane from livestock).

I would recommend a thorough read of this https://www.fcrn.org.uk/sites/default/files/project-files/fcrn_gnc_report.pdf as a starting point. However be warned - no livestock system comes out of this terribly well, even the holistic planned grazing we hear lots about..... In terms of its angle and authors I would say it is fairly balanced however - a bit of an inconvenient truth! Note however that they are at pains to state is the narrow focus of the paper in terms of GHG emissions - it attaches no weight to other eco system or related services provided by grassland farming systems.

Other studies are on-going, Agritech down in Cornwall being a good example - results yet to be formally published though.

My take based on current research - the future isn't vegan, this should and hopefully will remain very niche however meat consumption as a proportion of our diet will have to fall significantly and production systems themselves will see radical changes.

 

[Hampton]

@Hampton I am on a DAg programme (on-farm research based PhD equivalent) through Aberystwyth, has been a brilliant experience thus far. My research while not directly focused on GHG emissions per-se is constantly referring across to this growing issue that you correctly highlight.

As things stand veganism is not the answer as however it is skewed a large expansion in such diets results in grassland being ploughed out and so huge existing stores of carbon being released. However, as the above videos show this is not to say that all and in fact probably the majority of grassland systems are themselves capturing GHG's in any meaningful on-going sense (once you factor in methane from livestock).

I would recommend a thorough read of this https://www.fcrn.org.uk/sites/default/files/project-files/fcrn_gnc_report.pdf as a starting point. However be warned - no livestock system comes out of this terribly well, even the holistic planned grazing we hear lots about..... In terms of its angle and authors I would say it is fairly balanced however - a bit of an inconvenient truth! Note however that they are at pains to state is the narrow focus of the paper in terms of GHG emissions - it attaches no weight to other eco system or related services provided by grassland farming systems.

Other studies are on-going, Agritech down in Cornwall being a good example - results yet to be formally published though.

My take based on current research - the future isn't vegan, this should and hopefully will remain very niche however meat consumption as a proportion of our diet will have to fall significantly and production systems themselves will see radical changes.

Thank you, I will have a proper look at this when I get time, but it looks like the kind of thing I am looking for.
I don’t think it is a major problem if each farms aren’t carbon neutral (what businesses actually are) but it would be good to get a proper idea and then we can look to either do something about it, or justify things at the very least.
Thanks

 

[sjt01]

The tricky bit with carbon emissions is setting system boundaries. Even in the simple case of fuel, there are the emissions when it is used, but have you counted the emissions in oil exploration, drilling rigs, transporting to refinery, refining, transporting to filling station/farm tank? When it gets to tractors, mining the iron ore, all the way through to disposing of waste engine oil and scrapping the tractor at end of life.
Really to do it properly, stuff you buy should have a tag specifying carbon emission so far in its life.

 

[Hampton]

The tricky bit with carbon emissions is setting system boundaries. Even in the simple case of fuel, there are the emissions when it is used, but have you counted the emissions in oil exploration, drilling rigs, transporting to refinery, refining, transporting to filling station/farm tank? When it gets to tractors, mining the iron ore, all the way through to disposing of waste engine oil and scrapping the tractor at end of life.
Really to do it properly, stuff you buy should have a tag specifying carbon emission so far in its life.

I was thinking about this, but you can only count what is produced by our own business, after all, why should we take on the other burden from other companies which in effect makes them carbon neutral.
Therefore, fuel usage, carbon produced etc

 

[egbert]

It appears that the biggest challenge to conventional agriculture in the future is not brexit or glyphosate getting banned, but the steady shift in the food consumption of people in the developed world (those with money and choice) from meat eating diets to vegan and plant based food.
I had initially dismissed the veganism movement as a fad, but with the recent paper on climate change,and then one of my friends making this video for the economist (he’s a farmer’s son, highly intelligent, and a London dweller) it has brought things into focus for me.

It was actually shocking that someone could make such an unbalanced film, and it runs like an advertorial for the Dutch guys business.

Anyway, my point is we need solid facts and it’s much harder to defend an entire global industry than it is to defend our own businesses or region.
Therefore it would be very intersting to find out the carbon emissions on my own farm as it could be used a tangible evidence that I am not destroying the World for my own gains!
So, has anyone actually calculated their whole farm business data? Was it accurate? Is it replicatable across different businesses?
I’m quite keen to undertake this, so is research funding available or is anyone actually doing a Nuffield or a PHD on this?
Looking at the bigger picture, if we can carbon audit and we are found not to be the scourge we are claimed to be, then surely that is one of Mr Gove’s “public goods” and we could be rewarded accordingly. At the very least it could help with efficiency and focus our minds on our businesses.
So, is this madness, or is it as important as I think it is?

Wow, i'm surprised the Economist would put their name to this horse manure.

10kg's of corn (apparently fit for peeps) to 1kg of beef? what an outrageous lie. We're on about 1kg of (mostly not fit for human consumption) cake per kg beef leaving the place. If we 'finished' more, it might go up to 2/1.........although I'm hardly on finishing ground.
I know a man retailing a lot of beef who uses none at all.
It's still taking US feedlot figures -themselves massaged for I know- to make a pre-judged point.

and.....
Razing the jungle does indeed immediately release a shed load of CO", but you can't count those figures again and again every year.
And grassing it over for grazing stops it again. While the irony is that tilling it for soya makes it worse, not better.

Find your PHD student/Nuffield scholar, lets rip these people a new one.

 

[The_Swede]

More generally on an individual farm level this sort of GHG foot-printing is in all probability going to be a regulatory and / or supply contract requirement looking forwards.

The plus side of this is that if agreed methodologies are found and one can demonstrate a carbon negative system this should then attract a kind of carbon credit payment. Indeed even those who are neutral or at the lower end of the spectrum may be producing at a premium.

 

[Hampton]

More generally on an individual farm level this sort of GHG foot-printing is in all probability going to be a regulatory and / or supply contract requirement looking forwards.

The plus side of this is that if agreed methodologies are found and one can demonstrate a carbon negative system this should then attract a kind of carbon credit payment. Indeed even those who are neutral or at the lower end of the spectrum may be producing at a premium.

Exactly, public money for public goods

 

[hillman]

More generally on an individual farm level this sort of GHG foot-printing is in all probability going to be a regulatory and / or supply contract requirement looking forwards.

The plus side of this is that if agreed methodologies are found and one can demonstrate a carbon negative system this should then attract a kind of carbon credit payment. Indeed even those who are neutral or at the lower end of the spectrum may be producing at a premium.

In theory yes but I've a feeling that if you obtained any government funding to do any environmental improvements to your farm that potentially those credits are gone to multinationals, so unless it's out of your own pocket your not going to get paid twice from the exchequer!

 

[The_Swede]

Oh don't get me wrong - sadly I foresee that this if it came to fruition, is in many cases actually likely to be a stick rather than a carrot approach by the time it makes it to farm.

 

[The_Swede]

Assuming Brexit goes ahead we await Mr Goves proposals with great interest....

Additionally arriving at the 'agreed methodologies' I alluded to will be by no means straightforward, if not practically impossible.

 

[Raynard]

Pretty sure when I looked at footprint, came down to whether you are building SOM or not.

Personally I have no confidence in the Loss on Ignition test, so vaguely floored?!

Thoughts?