The fact is that most farm­ers are already active­ly reduc­ing their car­bon foot­prints and increas­ing the amount of car­bon stored on their farms, in many cas­es, with­out even think­ing about it in that way. 

There are three strate­gies which British farm­ers are adopt­ing that have the effect of reduc­ing the cli­mate chang­ing impact of their businesses.

• Boost­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty which reduces the GHG/​unit of out­put.
  One exam­ple of this lies in the much-maligned dairy sec­tor where the aver­age milk yield has risen from 6346 litres/​year to 8144 litres/​year in 2019 (Accord­ing to AHDB). That rep­re­sents an increase of out­put of 28.3% which, in turn, sug­gests a cor­re­spond­ing reduc­tion in the impact of each litre produced.
  
• Farm­land Car­bon Stor­age which is one part of the equa­tion where farm­ing has a unique advan­tage over most oth­er indus­tries.
  Car­bon is locked up in the organ­ic mat­ter on our farms. Every tree, plant, wood­en fence post and gate is made of the stuff. The great­est amount of car­bon trapped on farms is hid­den in the soil where it is qui­et­ly assist­ing the farmer by improv­ing the drainage, reduc­ing com­paction, feed­ing bio­di­ver­si­ty and mak­ing the soil eas­i­er to work
  For years, farm­ers have been plant­i­ng and repair­ing their hedgerows and every 100m of hedgerow can trap 0.12 tonnes of car­bon every year and with around 800,000 kms of hedges in the UK that’s a lot of car­bon.
  Recent Stew­ard­ship schemes have encour­aged farm­ers to trim hedges less fre­quent­ly which has also been a hid­den con­trib­u­tor to the trap­ping of GHGs on farms. By increas­ing the height of a farm hedge from 1.5m (5ft) to 2.7m (9ft) the amount of car­bon trapped in the plants ris­es by a fac­tor of three.
  Many farm­ers have changed the way that they estab­lish their crops and have begun to use tech­niques which dis­turb the soil less. These sys­tems of tillage are not suit­ed to all farms or crops but sales of direct drills and shal­low cul­ti­va­tion equip­ment have been on the rise in recent years. The new tech­niques pro­vide the farmer with two ways to reduce the car­bon foot­print of their busi­ness. By reduc­ing the amount of times that the trac­tor trav­els across the land the farm requires less diesel and every litre that is not required rep­re­sents a sav­ing of 2.62 Kgs of CO2. The oth­er part of the sto­ry is hap­pen­ing under­ground where the car­bon is trapped in the form of humus, organ­ic mat­ter and liv­ing things. Dis­turb­ing the soil brings these to the sur­face where they are at risk of decom­pos­ing quick­ly and releas­ing the car­bon that makes up the struc­ture of these things. In the mean­time, the farmer is adding to the organ­ic mat­ter in the land as the roots of the crops reach down into the soil to find mois­ture and plant nutri­ents. So, by adopt­ing dif­fer­ent farm­ing tech­niques, farm­ers are already reduc­ing the fos­sil fuels they burn and, at the same time, pre­serv­ing and adding more car­bon to the soil.
  
• Renew­able ener­gy gen­er­a­tion and con­sump­tion means that farm­ers are becom­ing less reliant on fos­sil fuels.
  Around 40% of British farm­ers have installed some form of renew­able ener­gy gen­er­a­tion on their farms. That includes every­thing from small solar PV arrays on the roof of the farm­house to large scale solar farms, anaer­o­bic digesters and wind tur­bines. In fact, these farm­ers are gen­er­at­ing far more than they can con­sume so the sur­plus is fed into the Nation­al Grid and it rep­re­sents enough ener­gy to pow­er ten mil­lion homes.

Most farm­ers are chang­ing the way that they farm because it makes sound finan­cial sense and that is just good busi­ness prac­tice, espe­cial­ly when the eco­nom­ics of farm­ing are under pres­sure. The great sto­ry here is that, while they buy less fuel, pro­duce more food, gen­er­ate ener­gy and tweak the way that they man­age their hedges, along with hun­dreds of oth­er pos­i­tive things they do to improve their busi­ness­es, they are reduc­ing the impact they have on the envi­ron­ment – pro­tect­ing plan­et Earth.

The pop­u­la­tion can­not sur­vive with­out its food and that makes the farm­ing indus­try essen­tial. It is also prob­a­bly the only indus­try that has the poten­tial to reach Zero car­bon emis­sions and maybe even become car­bon neg­a­tive in some cases.

About Andy Guy

LEAF Open Farm Sun­day Ambassador

Andy Guy ran his own LEAF Demon­stra­tion Farm between 2004 and 2010 and host­ed hun­dreds of vis­its dur­ing those years, par­tic­i­pat­ing in Open Farm Sun­day as a host until 2010 when he ceased farm­ing. Andy now runs an inde­pen­dent sus­tain­able food & farm­ing con­sul­tan­cy busi­ness and has been heav­i­ly involved in LEAF Open Farm Sun­day since 2010.

Tel: 07738 121883

Email: andy@​andyguyconsulting.​co.​uk