A new service is available to farmers in the UK to measure carbon on their farms.

CarbonCheck allows farmers to measure, monitor and benchmark carbon levels in soils.

As soil has huge potential to store carbon, it is important to be able to put figures on that storage and the benefit it is providing to the wider environment.

There is increasing interest in carbon storage and trading and the UK government has committed to reducing the countries’ carbon emissions to net zero by 2050.

CarbonCheck was developed through consultation with industry, agronomists and government advisers.

What does it measure?

A number of different analyses are used and will show figures for carbon stocks and organic carbon in tonnes per hectare.

The report returned to the farmer includes soil organic matter results, C:N ratio, total nitrogen, total carbon, inorganic carbon, carbonate classification and bulk density.

Another test can measure active carbon. This measures the available carbon which is used as a food source for soil microbes and is extremely important for soil health.

NRM business development manager Rory Geldard said: “We work with the majority of agronomy and farm consultancy providers and there has been a lot of interest in this type of analysis over the last few months.

“The new Environmental Land Management Scheme is being rolled out now and farmers are already looking at how the measurement of carbon can help demonstrate the improvements being made by changes in farming practices.

“We are recommending that growers benchmark their fields now and then repeat the tests annually to monitor progress.”