Carbon farming must not become a “feeding frenzy for consultants, corporations, and certifiers”, the ICMSA has insisted.

Certification bodies and “various intermediaries” stood to make “very substantial amounts of money” out of carbon farming, while land-owners would be left to deal with more “rules and regulations”, ICMSA deputy president Eamon Carroll maintained.

The warnings came in the wake of a recent stakeholder workshop where the Department of Agriculture confirmed that only carbon sequestered as a result of additional actions taken by landowners qualifies to be traded under schemes accredited by the EU’s Carbon Removals and Carbon Farming (CRCF) regulation.

The regulation establishes a set of criteria which, if carbon trading schemes adhere to them, allows accreditation at EU level.

To be counted, certified removals must be classed as “additional”, the Department’s workshop presentation stated, and must be the result of action put in place after a landowner joins a CRCF-compliant scheme.

In addition, the Department stressed that carbon removal activities credited under a CRCF-compliant scheme should be “beyond legal requirements”.

Reacting to the information provided at the workshop, Carroll said: “The benefits of carbon trading linked to farming have to flow to the farming communities - not Dublin-based companies, brokers, and accountants.”

The ICMSA also questioned why farmers got no credit for past carbon sequestration.

No goldmine

Meanwhile, the INHFA said the Department presentation confirmed that farmers with high nature value lands were not in fact sitting on a “goldmine”, and that this point needed to be made clear.

The INHFA called for more engagement with farmers in relation to building a carbon farming framework, and for confirmation that trading carbon credits would not alter the legal status of lands from agricultural to ecological/environmental.

“If this happens then these lands may not be eligible for CAP payments or agricultural tax reliefs. This could be a major issue for land transfers,” the INHFA spokesperson said.