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

Brisel

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Midlands
This came up in a discussion yesterday. An estate with a long history of the same family ownership wants to provide public goods such as carbon sequestration by working with its tenants to manage the land accordingly. Without getting bogged down in the type of tenancy, though the length clearly has a baring on a long term project, what are your thoughts? Soil carbon was the main topic. Ignore other public goods like biodiversity & water holding for now please.

How would this work for a grazing system? A serious partnership between landlord & tenant. How does this fit current tenancy law??

The Forestry Commission has 999 year leases to grow trees and can market the carbon capture in those trees, but that's just what it above ground, not in it.
 

Brisel

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Midlands
would this not fall in to the same category as 'mineral rights' stone / coal/oil etc ?

but then again who owns the water on the land ?

Soil carbon is much more "active" in terms of it being built up or depleted by every day agricultural activity. The tenant's activities wouldn't influence the mineral rights as such.

Can anyone ever own water? You need licences to impound it or use it.
 

7610 super q

Never Forgotten
Honorary Member
Sounds like a mine field. The tenants activities could deplete / build up reserves, and would want some sort of " compensation " for farming in a certain way, which would probably make the whole thing unviable for the landlords ( Having said that, I don't know how much CS pays ).
The NT seem to be able to dictate how tenants farm, I don't know about smaller estates with long tern AHA tenancies already in place though....
 

teslacoils

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
Sounds like a mine field. The tenants activities could deplete / build up reserves, and would want some sort of " compensation " for farming in a certain way, which would probably make the whole thing unviable for the landlords ( Having said that, I don't know how much CS pays ).
The NT seem to be able to dictate how tenants farm, I don't know about smaller estates with long tern AHA tenancies already in place though....

Absolute minefield. Will soon have agents doing ingoing and outgoing soil health audits and billing for reduction in bacteria.
 

Formatted

Member
Livestock Farmer
This is one of the reasons that landlords are pushing more large livestock tenancies onto contract farming or joint venture type frameworks, rather than tenancies
 

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
This came up in a discussion yesterday. An estate with a long history of the same family ownership wants to provide public goods such as carbon sequestration by working with its tenants to manage the land accordingly. Without getting bogged down in the type of tenancy, though the length clearly has a baring on a long term project, what are your thoughts? Soil carbon was the main topic. Ignore other public goods like biodiversity & water holding for now please.

How would this work for a grazing system? A serious partnership between landlord & tenant. How does this fit current tenancy law??

The Forestry Commission has 999 year leases to grow trees and can market the carbon capture in those trees, but that's just what it above ground, not in it.

This is something we have discussed at length at https://www.gentle-farming.com

what we have decided is that its really the MANAGEMENT of the land that determines it ability to sequester or store carbon so its the management that should be paid

However management needs land to manage ! so we think its then for manager to negotiate with landowner how much they will pass on

But fundamentally the principle is the landowner can not access the capital generated by carbon or biodiversity sales without correct management


Edit - website is having a few edits this morning ! will be back up later
 

An Gof

Member
Location
Cornwall
This came up in a discussion yesterday. An estate with a long history of the same family ownership wants to provide public goods such as carbon sequestration by working with its tenants to manage the land accordingly. Without getting bogged down in the type of tenancy, though the length clearly has a baring on a long term project, what are your thoughts? Soil carbon was the main topic. Ignore other public goods like biodiversity & water holding for now please.

How would this work for a grazing system? A serious partnership between landlord & tenant. How does this fit current tenancy law??

The Forestry Commission has 999 year leases to grow trees and can market the carbon capture in those trees, but that's just what it above ground, not in it.

What does Mrs Brisel think?
 

Brisel

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Midlands
What does Mrs Brisel think?

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.
 

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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