In our latest Spotlight on Rural Land and Carbon, we took the Savills Virtual Farm and looked at how many emissions it was producing. We then simulated four scenarios and looked at how the emissions profile changed. All of this was done using a free carbon calculator that aims to help farmers reduce their carbon footprint.

We thought it was all rather easy, entering our imaginary data from our imaginary farm without fear of the imaginary consequences. But what is it like in reality? We asked Savills Food and Farming Graduate Dan Murphy.

Who was your carbon account for and why did they want it done?

The farm is a 267-hectare mixed arable and beef farm of which 55 hectares is let on an annual cropping licence to a farming business growing energy crops for a local anaerobic digestion plant. We decided to exclude the let land and concentrate on the farming enterprises the farm has most control over which is a 75-head beef suckler herd, store cattle and 20-stable horse livery.

The farm is considering converting some of the grassland to woodland under a Woodland Grant scheme and wanted know how that would affect their emissions. At the moment, they’re emitting around 600 tonnes of CO₂e and sequestering around 200 tonnes of CO₂e annually. We identified that improving soil organic matter by just 0.1 per cent on one hectare would sequester the same tonnes of CO₂e as one hectare of new woodland planting.

Why didn’t you include the let land?

Getting hold of the relevant data from the farming business that has taken the land on an annual cropping licence would likely be very time consuming, and that assumes that they have the data available in the first place.

It’s worth noting that not all contracted operations must be excluded. The farm does utilise contractors for some operations, but the calculator has a way of estimating emissions based on that particular operation.

So it made it quite easy to enter data for the rest of the farm?

If I am completely honest, there are some parts that are not great. If you change a tyre, that is accounted for, but instead of simply entering the tyre size and type you have to enter the weight as this determines the quantity of embedded carbon. However, who weighs a tyre before they fit it? Similarly, recycling of spray cans and fertiliser bags is measured by weight but farms who are already time limited are just not going to keep track of that sort of detail.

On the other hand, it helps you out in a lot of areas, like the ease of entering contractor operations, although for the more specialist crop growers not every farming operation is included. Another well detailed area is in-putting of livestock, where you are able to choose a wide range of livestock types and with this particular carbon audit allowing us to select heifers for breeding, beef cows, steers, beef females for slaughter, and so on.

Overall, the ease of data entry comes down to how proactive that particular farming business is at recording and managing inputs on a wide range of farm data. As carbon auditing becomes more of a common practice, farmers are likely to become more proactive in recording this type of data. As this is based on the Savills Virtual Farm, most of the data was already available to us. That’s not to say the data was perfect and complete and I would recommend people start accounting sooner rather than later.

You got hold of the data and put it into the calculator. What next?

The calculator generates a report that breaks everything down for you. You start with a simple graph of your carbon balance. It then gets analysed further into different elements of the farming business for example livestock, woodland, fuels, and so on. You can go further again and find out what that 200 m of three-strand barbed wire fencing meant for your CO₂e emissions and what percentage of your materials emissions that accounts for. It sounds a bit excessive but actually, it allows you to find efficiencies in even the most obscure places of the farm.

But of course, the quality of  the report depends on the accuracy of the data you enter and it is worth going that extra mile. If you can go right into the detail of your tractor’s BHP or fertiliser blend, it might be there that you can find carbon and financial savings in the future. That is where we really got involved. Anyone can collect and enter the data. What is less obvious is where the reductions in CO₂e can be made. We identified a list of 10 things that this particular farm could do that could potentially save over 200 tonnes of CO₂e emissions.

A busy year ahead then?

Every year is a busy year in farming. But we narrowed it down to an action list of four points that would have the greatest effect, not just on carbon but the business as a whole. A lot of measures have positive consequences for the rest of the business – you just have to select the most appropriate ones.

It is quite a gradual process and some measures will not reduce emissions by even a tonne. One measure will increase carbon for a period of time as the Savills Virtual Farm has switched to direct drilling and will incur the carbon cost of new machinery for that. But the direct drilling should lead to better soil health and reduced fuel use giving the farm a better overall carbon account in the future, alongside the aim of improving yields and increasing income too.

Our intention now is to continue taking carbon accounts each year but I would recommend recording anything relevant on a monthly basis. That way, when you come to do your annual carbon account, the data is all there and easily accessible. If you’re doing your financial account review at the end of the month, why not make carbon a part of that?

Further information

Contact Joe Lloyd or Dan Murphy

Contact Savills Rural