Carbon footprint /offset

sodbuster

Member
How are mixed farms planning to deal with this?
If you are owner occupier there are more options I think like planting poorer ground with trees etc. What would you do as a tenant when all woods trees etc belong to the land owner estate etc. I am struggling to know what to do here 🤷🏻‍♂️
 

Bald Rick

Moderator
Livestock Farmer
Location
Anglesey
How are mixed farms planning to deal with this?
If you are owner occupier there are more options I think like planting poorer ground with trees etc. What would you do as a tenant when all woods trees etc belong to the land owner estate etc. I am struggling to know what to do here 🤷🏻‍♂️

Do NOTHING

Why should you when there are plenty of other industries a lot “dirtier” than agriculture
 

Jones wales

Member
Livestock Farmer
Grassland sequences carbon better than trees. Fact.
Take a tree 20 years to grow to be able to store as much carbon as grassland. Fact.
What I don't understand is they want to by out carbon credits to offset there polluting industries so if we keep out credits then we can keep more cattle as we would be offsetting it with our own credits and everyone will be happy and we will be saving the environment as British Airways seem to want to do by buy up our farms and planning trees on them.
Hash Tag # Worlds gone mad #
 

NewFarm

Member
Planting trees here. Native species for coppicing use on farm into margins, or fruit and nut trees into old orchards.

The above isn't funded by any grant or scheme, I aim to plant 100-200 trees each winter.

Interestingly most farm tenancy agreements in pre-industrial times mandated that tenants plant a number of trees per year, encouraged the production of timber trees, and also controlled frequency of harvesting (typically pollarding) trees for fuel.

Comments above re:grassland sequestration of carbon, I'd agree that grassland soils store huge amounts not carbon. Most will have higher soil OM over than most arable fields, however, unless you are managing the land in such a way that the soil OM is increasing year on year, there is no real sequestration of carbon.
 
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Jones wales

Member
Livestock Farmer
Planting trees here. Native species for coppicing use on farm into margins, or fruit and nut trees into old orchards.

The above isn't funded by any grant or scheme, I aim to plant 100-200 trees each winter.

Interestingly most farm tenancy agreements in pre-industrial times mandated that tenants plant a number of trees per year, encouraged the production of timber trees, and also controlled frequency of harvesting (typically pollarding) trees for fuel.

Comments above re:grassland sequestration of carbon, I'd agree that grassland soils store huge amounts not carbon. Most will have higher soil OM over than most arable fields, however, unless you are managing the land in such a way that the soil OM is increasing year on year, there is no real sequestration of carbon.
As an upland farm there is a lot of ground that does not get ploughed and may only get drilled so I take it the carbon is still stored.
 

NewFarm

Member
Over seeding is likely to have little effect long term.
If you are spraying off before hand there's going to be a short term dip as the original grass decays.
 

DaveGrohl

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Cumbria
To all those planting trees: what is the plan in say 100 years when most of them will have died? Is there a plan? Or are you jist happy to go along with the Emperor's new clothes woolpulling? Genuine question btw.

As for carbon footprinting, is anyone aware of a carbon calculator that actually accounts for methane properly, ie doesn't use GWP100?
 

NewFarm

Member
Why is carbon always measured as a percentage, with percentage gain being the mark of success?
For arguments sake, if I have a field which is 3% carbon and I increase the topsoil by 1mm per year and that 1mm is 3% carbon, then surely I’m storing more carbon, even though the percentage amount is still the same?
How do you know you are increasing topsoil by 1mm per year?
 

yellowbelly

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
N.Lincs
What I don't understand is they want to by out carbon credits to offset there polluting industries so if we keep out credits then we can keep more cattle as we would be offsetting it with our own credits and everyone will be happy and we will be saving the environment
We (the farming community) should not entertain selling our carbon credits to the big polluters. We should keep them to ourselves - I don't see a problem trading them between ourselves, that would just help to keep agriculture neutral.
Let the big polluters (airlines and heavy industry, etc) put their own houses in order - don't give them a cheap fix by letting them have our credits.
 

delilah

Member
How are mixed farms planning to deal with this?

Anyone comes asking, just gonna show them this:

In the work of Guo and Gifford (2002) a meta-analysis was undertaken of data from 74 international land use change and soil carbon storage studies. It measured the effects of land use change in 537 instances and was used to determine the importance of land use and land use change on soil carbon stocks. The analysis showed that there was a decline in soil carbon stocks after land use conversion from grassland to plantation forest (−10 percent), native forest to plantation forest (−13 percent), native forest to cropland (−42 percent), and grassland to cropland (−59 percent). There were significant increases in soil carbon stocks after land use changes from native forest to grassland (+8 percent), cropland to grassland (+19 percent), cropland to plantation (+18 percent), and cropland to secondary forest (+53 percent). The conversion of native forest or grassland to broadleaf deciduous tree plantation had no effect on soil carbon stocks, but conversion to pine or conifer forest reduced soil carbon by between 12 and 15 percent. This analysis of land use change and soil carbon data also suggested that, if a given land use change is responsible for soil carbon losses, then the reverse change could potentially increase soil carbon stocks. But it is important to recognise that it can take decades if not centuries to recover to the original level of soil carbon stocks after disturbance due to land use change (Guo and Gifford, 2002).
 

Hb21

Member
Mixed Farmer
Absolutely nothing, every other industry is doing sod all about being green. Its our industry representatives that are ludicrous enough to think that we need to change our businesses to save the planet. The only reason the food processors are requesting some of their suppliers become net zero is to make themselves look good.
 

Hampton

Member
BASIS
Location
Shropshire
To all those planting trees: what is the plan in say 100 years when most of them will have died? Is there a plan? Or are you jist happy to go along with the Emperor's new clothes woolpulling? Genuine question btw.

As for carbon footprinting, is anyone aware of a carbon calculator that actually accounts for methane properly, ie doesn't use GWP100?
NFu and Ahdb should be producing a calculator that does precisely that.
I mean, the NFu had Myles Allen at their conference to explain to farmers why gwp100 was wrong, then did nothing about it
 

Chris F

Staff Member
Media
Location
Hammerwich
Do NOTHING

Why should you when there are plenty of other industries a lot “dirtier” than agriculture

Agree - nothing to do at the moment. I think its a good idea to know what your footprint is, but no need to do anything at the moment, unless you can see a commercial gain from it.

And I do mean your footprint - not the footprint of everyone who supplies you.
 

DaveGrohl

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Cumbria
Agree - nothing to do at the moment. I think its a good idea to know what your footprint is, but no need to do anything at the moment, unless you can see a commercial gain from it.

And I do mean your footprint - not the footprint of everyone who supplies you.
When you say footprint, I take it you mean do a proper carbon balance calculation and not just an EMISSIONS calculation? No other industry ABSORBS carbon after all......
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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