Carbon is a buzz word in farming at the moment. In fact, New Zealand has mooted the introduction of an environment tax on farms, where farmers will have to pay 5% of the total carbon cost associated with their farm.

In Scotland we’ve seen the introduction of a carbon audit as part of the Beef Efficiency Scheme. The Farmers Journal sat down with farmer Rory Young and advisor Rhidian Jones to see what is involved in the process.

In this instance, we were discussing Clachan farm which is a beef and sheep hill farm just outside Oban. While the scheme is primarily focused on beef enterprises, the carbon audit is completed at business level. The advisor meets the farmer on farm to go through the audit which uses the AgRECalc carbon calculator.

Step-by-step at Clachan

1. Set up page

The first part goes through the type of enterprise and their details. For example, it asks whether the beef system is spring-or autumn-calving, upland or lowland and whether the calves are sold as store or finished. It looks for the classes of animals, whether they are cows, bulls, heifers, steers etc. It also asks for the area of rough grazing, grazing pasture or silage and what other crops are grown, if any.

2. Land and crops

  • Areas of grassland, crops and woodland.
  • Analysis and quantity of fertiliser and lime applied to grassland and crops.
  • How the land is used, eg % used by sheep or cattle.
  • Dry matter % of the silage and whole crop (if applicable).
  • Forage and crop yields, including straw yields.
  • Quantities of homegrown feeds and bedding used and/or sold.
  • 3. Livestock

  • Average number of livestock and average liveweights (per livestock age, class and sex).
  • Number and liveweight of purchased and sold animals, deaths of livestock.
  • Calving %.
  • Daily liveweight gain of cattle.
  • How long stock are housed for and what is the manure management system (eg slats, cubicles, straw).
  • Type and quantity of purchased feeds and bedding used.
  • Lambing % (if applicable).
  • Quantity of wool sales (if applicable).
  • 4. Energy and waste

    Quantity of electricity, red diesel, white diesel, petrol, kerosene used, and waste plastic produced. The idea here is to split these by enterprise as much as possible.

    After you enter all this information AgreCalc generates a report, showing the total CO2 emissions from the farm, the proportion of those attributable to the beef enterprise and what that equates to per kg of deadweight produced by the farm.

    It does not take in to account the amount of carbon sequestered by any grassland on the farm (I would check this with SAC as it might be in the calculation but is not itemised on the results page). The emissions are expressed as kg of carbon dioxide equivalents with methane and nitrous oxide emissions converted to CO2 eq.

    Traffic lights

    The programme has an indicator system that shows the level of opportunity with each part of the business which could lower the carbon output. For example, it will tell you whether the opportunity to reduce your carbon emissions associated with purchased feed is low, medium or high.

    It also offers you the chance to compare your farm system to other farms with the same enterprise.

    Three changes

    After the first visit in year one the farmer has to agree to make one management improvement that will reduce the greenhouse gas emissions. This can be something as simple as testing soils or analysing silage, depending on what has been identified by the calculator. During the course of the Beef Efficiency Scheme there needs to be two other actions taken. One of these needs to be in relation to genetics, or breeding. This could be something like calving heifers at a younger age, changing breeds to suit the farm, reducing cow size etc.

    The third action needs to be something else that is identified by the calculator and from the discussion with the advisor.

    There will also be a series of events run as part of the scheme from this summer onwards. The farmers don’t need to sign up for anything immediately, apart from the one action after the first visit. The other actions can be taken after they’ve been to a few events and meetings to find out more technical information.

    Carbon is a cost. It’s not free, you have to pay to produce carbon, so if we’re measuring that then we should have the ability to try and reduce it.

    I have a sneaky suspicion that carbon is about to play a far bigger role in our lives than it is just now. Until as an industry we understand what our carbon emissions are then it’s very difficult for us to say if we’re improving or getting worse. Farming in general has a big role to play in trying to help carbon emissions. It’s an opportunity for agriculture, not something to be viewed as a threat.

    I have absolute sympathy for the people who have to design a carbon auditing programme that has to work for an entire nation of farmers. But I think there are a lot of opportunities for information to be fed in inconsistently because it is not prescriptive enough for how it asks for certain things; ages, numbers of animals, average weights. It’s open to not necessarily intentional abuse but it is better sometimes if you ask a very specific question to get an answer.

    The main thing is that you are sitting down with the farmer and actually recording data about the business, both physical and technical. People might think that a carbon footprint may not immediately affect them, but once they see the results they are quite interested in what the findings are and how they can be improved.

    Useful output

    1. Because some of the results are expressed per kg of beef or lamb produced, then if you can produce more kgs from the same resources. That’s going to improve your carbon footprint and earn more money as well by raising farm output.

    2. The most common thing farmers pick up on are commencing or expanding on the soil testing programme, especially for permanent grazing land.

    Farmers are more likely to test soils on silage fields or those being re-seeded but not so much on permanent grazing ground even though it receives fertiliser inputs. If the pH is improved in those fields then that will make better use of nutrients and will lead to more grass, better quality grass and opportunities to increase stocking rate or reduce purchased feed and fertiliser.

    Changes to the current system

    There’s a few pages that are a bit frustrating to fill in, such as the average number of livestock over the year. I don’t know if there is a better way to do it.

    Perhaps a little bit more guidance or weighing dates would be an option there.