The paperwork needed for new carbon audits under the NI beef and lamb farm quality assurance scheme (FQAS) will be kept to a minimum, the Livestock and Meat Commission (LMC) has said.

Colin Smith, the LMC’s industry development manager, confirmed that data will be collected from almost 12,000 FQAS participants to calculate net greenhouse gas emissions from “routine farm activities”.

“The LMC are building the IT infrastructure that is required to pull various information sources together to allow us to have pre-populated farm surveys.

“We want to do this efficiently and we want to reduce the burden of data collection for our farmers,” he said at an event in Stormont last week.

Smith explained that to complete the carbon footprint exercise, information will be required across three broad areas, namely livestock, land/crops, and energy/waste.

He said information on livestock will be taken directly from DAERA’s online system of animal records, known as APHIS, which should help speed up the carbon audit process for each farmer.

“We are the envy of a lot of other farmers throughout the UK and Ireland because we have a significant amount of information already there on APHIS,” he maintained.

Discussions with DAERA are also ongoing about potentially using data from each farm’s single application form to help fill out information about land and crops.

Likewise, the LMC hopes its carbon audits will eventually tap into DAERA’s new Soil Nutrient Health Scheme which is quantifying the carbon stored on NI farms in soils, hedgerows, and trees.

“If we can harvest that information and use it for our benefit, we could be in a phenomenal position. The soil scheme is looking to test 700,000 fields, that is unheard of in other parts of the UK,” Smith said.

UFU support

The new carbon audit project is being spearheaded by the LMC but is supported by a range of industry groups, including the Ulster Farmers’ Union (UFU).

Speaking at the same event, UFU president David Brown said carbon audits would help farmers to play their part in meeting greenhouse gas reduction targets.

“As well as legislative targets, the other side of the coin is at the processor and retailer level where there are huge demands to show that the supply chain is able to drive down emissions,” he said.