Advancing Farm Audits

Markets for farm net carbon-equivalency scores are advancing quickly in the United Kingdom. Tapping them starts with calculating total emissions net of soil carbon flux and woodland sequestration.

First off, readers need to understand that ‘carbon’ offsets, insets, pricing and markets, are measured in carbon dioxide equivalency units.

Of the three main greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane, the latter two are much stronger agents. Their respective warming factors are taken into account by weighting their intensity compared to CO2.

Unlike in North America, where carbon markets are voluntary and compliance regulations are weak, the UK has passed a law that the country will be net-zero in emissions by 2050. Agriculture and land use subsidies for soil and woodland carbon sequestration are already available to farmers through the Sustainable Farming Initiative (SFI).

The SFI guidelines are the starting point for a farm to develop a carbon marketing strategy, according to today’s excellent webinar from agriculture publication Farmers Weekly. Hosts from farm business consultancy Laurence Gould and startup aggregator Agrasta connected the dots in new markets for low-emission farm products.

The central topic was the cost/benefit for farms to conduct a carbon audit. In Scotland now, carbon audits are government-subsidized to remove the cost barrier for farmers to start the process, under the Preparing for Sustainable Farming program.

Carbon audits are not strictly defined – they come in many forms, are offered by many different providers, and have different values in the marketplace. For example:

• Audits that are third-party verified have a higher value than those that are completed by internal members of the farm team.

• Entering data based on actual records, rather than estimates or figures based on memory, creates higher quality audits that won’t have to be revised later.

• Actual measured soil carbon has a higher value yet, but not necessarily by enough to offset sampling and testing costs.

Table Stakes

Carbon audits are fast-becoming the license to trade for UK farms selling produce into the retail food trade. Restaurants, for example, estimate that over 90% of their total emissions stem from field level activities of the food they purchase, meaning they have no option in meeting their commitments than to switch to purchasing from low-carbon sources.