Who "owns" the carbon on a farm? Landlord or tenant?

Brisel

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Midlands
The Crown Estate tried this a while ago, after they let a block of arable land in Lincs to the highest bidder with the agent playing every trick to play bidders against one another for the highest rent. The successful bidder then mined all the phosphate, potash and was kicked out a few years into his FBT leaving a mess including a bad blackgrass problem. With no ingoing valuation the Crown had no leverage against the tenant they deserved getting in the first place. The neighbours, including us, had a chuckle at that, though we never got the land ourselves subsequently as they sent soil samplers in & specified that the land had to be at index 2 by the end of the 5 year FBT from the index 0 is currently was. We didn't put a big offer in, having costed out what we needed to put in to correct it, never mind made a quid on farming it.

Working out a valuation on organic matter & soil structure was impossible back then & we don't seem to be much further ahead now either. It's too hard to put an absolute and reliable figure on it. Michael Gove couldn't get good metrics while he was supervising the constriction of the Agriculture and Environment bills.
 
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holwellcourtfarm

Member
Livestock Farmer
The Crown Estate tried this a while ago, after they let a block of arable land in Lincs to the highest bidder with the agent playing every trick to play bidders against one another for the highest rent. The successful bidder then mined all the phosphate, potash and was kicked out a few years into his FBT leaving a mess including a bad blackgrass problem. With no ingoing valuation the Crown had no leverage against the tenant they deserved getting in the first place. The neighbours, including us, had a chuckle at that, though we never got the land ourselves subsequently as they sent soil samplers in & specified that the land had to be at index 2 by the end of the 5 year FBT from the index 0 is currently was. We didn't put a big offer in, having costed out what we needed to put in to correct it, never mind made a quid on farming it.

Working out a valuation on organic matter & soil structure was impossible back then & we don't seem to be much further ahead now either. It's too hard to put an absolute figure on it. Michael Gove couldn't get good metrics while he was supervising the constriction of the Agriculture and Environment bills.
Greedy land agents often get the tenants they deserve....
 

The Ruminant

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Hertfordshire
The problem is that whoever is paying for the sequestered carbon - Heathrow, offsetting emissions, or Persimmon Homes, or whoever - will want to know that the carbon has been sequestered permanently. That’s why they will only want to enter into very long (30+ years??) agreements.

If the tenant only has a short-term tenancy, and gets paid for increasing carbon, what happens if, after the tenancy has ended, the carbon levels fall? Who pays the money back? The tenant who’s received it? The landlord who’s not received it? Other??
 

delilah

Member
The problem is that whoever is paying for the sequestered carbon - Heathrow, offsetting emissions, or Persimmon Homes, or whoever - will want to know that the carbon has been sequestered permanently. That’s why they will only want to enter into very long (30+ years??) agreements.

If the tenant only has a short-term tenancy, and gets paid for increasing carbon, what happens if, after the tenancy has ended, the carbon levels fall? Who pays the money back? The tenant who’s received it? The landlord who’s not received it? Other??

Do Persimmon homes even give 30 years guarantee on their houses ? Can't see them being that fussed about any notional carbon offsetting lasting longer than the house.
Your questions are eminently sensible. If we pretend for a split second that this whole thing isn't a crock of sh!t.
 

egbert

Member
Livestock Farmer
She had a member (a resident agent) ask her the question, hence the discussion! This a minefield and open to abuse by landlords. The ideal is a partnership where additional work by the tenant should be rewarded, especially with long tenancies. The "who owns the carbon" was the landlord but that's just over-simplifying how you'd achieve the desired goals when they need the occupier to help deliver the benefits.

Just like an owner with a stewardship scheme, they need the people on the ground to deliver and that should be recognised. Summer grazing for you? That will be £100/acre and by the way, you can't do this and that, and you must comply with these prescriptions. Oh. You're trousering £100/acre from the RPA in CS plus BPS, you can pay me £40/acre to comply with those rules.

I'm damn sure my LA is giving the matter consideration.
On an AHA with, potentially, a generation in hand, I'm not sure how they'd bring it in. so right now, it's mine to do as I please with, within the terms of 'good husbandry' or whatever the wording is.
Legal goons rub their hands with glee!


Does she take hard currency in payment? :)
More to the point, how do I access this hard coin?
 

egbert

Member
Livestock Farmer
Do Persimmon homes even give 30 years guarantee on their houses ? Can't see them being that fussed about any notional carbon offsetting lasting longer than the house.
Your questions are eminently sensible. If we pretend for a split second that this whole thing isn't a crock of sh!t.
Specifically on Persimmons Homes ...... oh I think I know which farms will benefit from any sequestration moneys there........
(unless matters have changed lately, they might be in Northumberland)
Now that would be an integrated system!

but yes, it's a crock of fertiliser.
Talking about 30 years for a substance that'll take many thousands of years to recapture at the rate we're going, and was previously undisturbed for hundreds of millions of years.
 

delilah

Member
but yes, it's a crock of fertiliser.
Talking about 30 years for a substance that'll take many thousands of years to recapture at the rate we're going, and was previously undisturbed for hundreds of millions of years.

To make a comparison with another wheeze with a similar time-frame.
I wont be the only person on here who had an endowment mortgage. What a farce. How much has that cost us all with claims and counter claims for compensation, how many ambulance chasing solicitors got wealthy on the back of it all ? I see carbon trading as having just as much potential to create legal and financial strain on folks.
Farmers fascinate me. They spend all day dealing with real, tangible things. Soil, metal, flesh. They understand what matters, and what is flannel. Then someone comes along promising alchemy and they get all starry eyed. Very strange.
 

holwellcourtfarm

Member
Livestock Farmer
To make a comparison with another wheeze with a similar time-frame.
I wont be the only person on here who had an endowment mortgage. What a farce. How much has that cost us all with claims and counter claims for compensation, how many ambulance chasing solicitors got wealthy on the back of it all ? I see carbon trading as having just as much potential to create legal and financial strain on folks.
Farmers fascinate me. They spend all day dealing with real, tangible things. Soil, metal, flesh. They understand what matters, and what is flannel. Then someone comes along promising alchemy and they get all starry eyed. Very strange.
Easy for me to say,having steered clear of them, but Endowment Mortgages always seemed risky to me and so does carbon trading for primary producers. They make a good analogy @delilah

Until the rules around it become clear and routinely enforceable I'll not be taking part. We need clarity on how we will be held accountable for our own carbon performance (and how it will be measured in reality) before we go "selling" it to assuage the guilt of others.
 

Treg

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Cornwall
I would have thought the public own the carbon , they made it , it's theirs .
They may choose to pay farmers to store it for them but it is still theirs , so it would have to be some sort of lease scheme but what a nightmare that could create , Arable farmers would convert to permanent pasture to get the payments, then where would we all be ?
What's needed is some sort of payment that would be given to all farmers as they grow stuff, keep it simple, like Simple farmer payment :unsure: Oops ! Farmers simple payment? Or I know Basic Payment scheme...Bingo.
 

egbert

Member
Livestock Farmer
I would have thought the public own the carbon , they made it , it's theirs .
They may choose to pay farmers to store it for them but it is still theirs , so it would have to be some sort of lease scheme but what a nightmare that could create , Arable farmers would convert to permanent pasture to get the payments, then where would we all be ?
What's needed is some sort of payment that would be given to all farmers as they grow stuff, keep it simple, like Simple farmer payment :unsure: Oops ! Farmers simple payment? Or I know Basic Payment scheme...Bingo.
ah...we're back to native American Chief 'Seattle'. If I recall....'how can you buy or sell the sky?'
 

primmiemoo

Member
Location
Devon
I would have thought the public own the carbon , they made it , it's theirs .
They may choose to pay farmers to store it for them but it is still theirs , so it would have to be some sort of lease scheme but what a nightmare that could create , Arable farmers would convert to permanent pasture to get the payments, then where would we all be ?
What's needed is some sort of payment that would be given to all farmers as they grow stuff, keep it simple, like Simple farmer payment :unsure: Oops ! Farmers simple payment? Or I know Basic Payment scheme...Bingo.

Calculated and paid across PP, and quietly integrated into lowest impact arable?
 

beefandsleep

Member
Location
Staffordshire
Without a baseline level of carbon measured at the start of a tenancy then I don’t see how the tenant can claim ownership. I agree with Clive’s point that as management affects soil carbon then management should be paid or get the benefits from it. On the other hand, would a tenant be happy to enter into an agreement that made him liable for carbon losses? It does seem rather an in exact science at the moment, I’m not sure I would be willing to leave myself open to a dilapidations bill based on a soil carbon test. If you were taking on some worn out short term fbt land that had been abused for 10 years then maybe, but 1, why would you want to take it on in that case. 2, the landlord wouldn’t put a financial reward for increasing soil carbon into the contract anyway.
 

primmiemoo

Member
Location
Devon
I keep seeing that but not all pp is the same. Some is a diverse wonderland, some is a green desert.

Nothing is as simple a we humans like to make out.

I hear snippets from a current ELMS focus group member from time to time, and agree. Really hungry, neglected PP can become a desert almost as bad as the infamous quintuple+ cut monoculture 3 year IRG ley.
The stupid thing is, that rejuvenating and maintaining the former to support diversity once more doesn't seem to be within the scheme ... yet ... but it's the dynamic of diversity that brings all the benefits.
 

holwellcourtfarm

Member
Livestock Farmer
I hear snippets from a current ELMS focus group member from time to time, and agree. Really hungry, neglected PP can become a desert almost as bad as the infamous quintuple+ cut monoculture 3 year IRG ley.
The stupid thing is, that rejuvenating and maintaining the former to support diversity once more doesn't seem to be within the scheme ... yet ... but it's the dynamic of diversity that brings all the benefits.
And a change of management of the PP will achieve the necessary diversity in a few years at minimal cost unlike adding diversity to degarded arable.

It should really be a "no-brainer" to include as an option in ELMS.
 
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