How carbon farming in the UK can financially help your farm

Climate change affects more than just the Polar bears, low-lying Pacific Islands, or the rainforests of the Amazon; soon, we’ll feel the effects closer to home on UK farms and food production. Even today, farmers battle extreme weather events, accelerating crop diseases, and price uncertainty. 

Amidst issues like food insecurity and inflation, there is also growing pressure on the agricultural sector to adopt more sustainable practices, as seen in the recent introduction of the Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMS) subsidy. Agriculture is not just a victim of climate change, as the sector is responsible for 25% of the total greenhouse gas emissions. 

Carbon farming could be the road for farmers and agriculture businesses to take to become more sustainable. This is a regenerative agricultural practice that’s aimed at carbon sequestration–the capture of atmospheric carbon dioxide into the soil. Read on to learn all about carbon farming, what it is, how it can help farmers be more sustainable, and how UK farms can financially benefit from carbon farming.

What is carbon farming? 

When plants die, all the carbon they stored during photosynthesis is released back into the atmosphere or gets stored in the soil for a long time. Conventional agriculture and farming practices use tilling to release carbon. However, with carbon farming, the aim is to put and keep this carbon in the soil. Although carbon farming is an umbrella term, it could refer to techniques such as minimal or not ploughing fields, rotating crops, and planting cover crops.

Carbon farming has many environmental benefits, as it can:

  • Lower greenhouse gas emissions associated with the clearing of vegetation. 
  • Store carbon in vegetation
  • Increase biodiversity
  • Improve air quality
  • Mitigate the risk of soil erosion
  • Increase soil fertility 
  • Reduce soil salinity 
  • Improve overall soil health 
  • Buffer against drought 
  • Improve native vegetation, habitat, and animal health. 

It also benefits farmers by enhancing crop production, restoring degraded soils, purifying groundwater, and reducing pollution. 

The exciting thing about carbon farming and regenerative agriculture is that they can help reverse climate change within our lifetime. Suppose carbon farming were to be implemented on a large scale. In that case, regenerative farming and agriculture could draw more than 100 billion tons of carbon into the soil–equivalent to 367 billion tons of carbon dioxide, more than 200 billion tons of CO2 needed to pull us back from the current climate change tipping point. 

How can you integrate carbon farming into your farm or land venture? 

Carbon farming simply refers to agriculture methods aimed at sequestering carbon from the atmosphere into the soil, root crops, wood, and leaves. Carbon farming practices may include: 

  • Returning leftover biomass to the soil as mulch after a harvest. As the biomass decomposes, this residue will fuel the carbon cycle in the soil. 
  • Replacing monocultures with higher diversity crop rotations. Rotating crops and using cover crops in off-seasons can help keep the soil enriched. 
  • Replacing chemical fertilisers and pesticides with integrated nutrient and alternative pest management techniques. 
  • Restoring and rewetting peatlands. This will help ensure that existing carbon stocks remain intact. 
  • Preserving permanent grasslands or converting croplands to fallow or permanent pastures. 
  • Afforestation and integrating trees and livestock with croplands. 

These are just a few examples of carbon farming practices you may want to incorporate on your farm. 

What are the pros of carbon farming? 

Carbon farming doesn’t just help to offset emissions, but it can restore degraded soils, enhance crop production, and reduce pollution by minimising erosion and nutrient runoff. Farmers can also purify surface and groundwater as well as increase microbial activity and soil biodiversity.

These added benefits of carbon farming mean that more food can be produced but with less pollution and emissions. In the long term and on a large scale, it could even reverse the adverse effects of climate change and could be the secret weapon we’re looking for to meet carbon emissions reduction goals. 

What are the cons of carbon farming? 

So far, carbon farming sounds great: You can reduce the effects of climate change while producing more crops. What’s the downside? There are a few things to keep in mind before taking on carbon farming: 

  • The good of carbon farming can be reversed. After the soil’s carbon content has increased over the years, taking carbon out of the air can release carbon back into the atmosphere if carbon farming measures are stopped, or mistakes are made when farming or farming techniques change. 
  • Leakage of organic material. Land managers must take care not to move organic matter from one field to another. An increase in carbon stock will only occur if biomass is left on the same field or brought back to the same field in the form of manure and digestate. 
  • There is a limit to how much carbon a soil can store. Carbon farming is most effective in the beginning, but how much carbon the soil can accumulate will decrease over time. 
  • Measuring and monitoring soil carbon content is prone to errors and is difficult. There needs to be some standardisation of sequestered carbon for carbon removal credits generated by carbon farming, and it needs to be watertight. 
  • Not tilling the soil could mean more pesticide use. Some farmers say that if they stop tilling the fields, they may need to use more glyphosate instead, as less tilling means more pests. 

How can farmers financially benefit from carbon farming practices

Farmers have received the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) until now, which provided financial support based on standardised area payments. However, since Brexit, this scheme has been replaced with ELMS, which rewards farmers for environmental initiatives, such as carbon farming. The basis for the new ELMS is “public money for public goods,” where public goods are things available to all and have no economic market, including:

  • Clean air
  • Clean water 
  • Carbon sequestration
  • Biodiversity 
  • Flood mitigation 
  • Access to nature
  • Cultural heritage 
  • Nature recovery 

Farmers engaged in carbon farming can benefit financially from the ELMS, which includes the Sustainable Farming Initiative (SFI), Local Nature Recovery scheme, and Landscape Recovery scheme. SFI offers payments for farmers who deliver both environmental and climate benefits. 

If you are interested in carbon farming or other sustainable initiatives for your farm or land venture, get in touch with our team at Granter and we can help you get the claim or funding you need, and also advise you on how to get involved in more sustainable measures that could benefit you financially.

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