Farmers will not be credited for the carbon they sequester on their lands until 2030, the Department of Agriculture has predicted.

An EU-wide process to accredit farm carbon, the EU carbon certification scheme, won’t be fully operational until the end of the decade, department inspector Philip Blackwell said.

He was speaking at the Agricultural Science Association (ASA) ‘Carbon Cycling, Measurement, Accounting and Policy’ symposium at Johnstown Castle, Co Wexford, on Wednesday. Farmers will likely have a more accurate picture of what hedgerows and farm forestry are sequestering from 2025 as the emissions accounting is more straightforward.

However, it will be 2030 before a farmer’s full land use carbon calculations, incorporating grasslands and tillage areas, will be accounted for.

EPA researcher Bernard Hyde echoed Blackwell’s views and said Ireland is coming from a space of “sparse” information on carbon sequestered and emitted from land use and agriculture to a having a “very detailed” picture. However, he warned this is going to take a number of years as more research was needed in the past and the sector is now playing catchup. “Up until last week we didn’t have a national full [land use] cover map with detail,” he said.