Meeting addresses ways to cut carbon footprint

12:37pm Friday 31st October 2008

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The Farming Wildlife Advisory Group (FWAG) was set up in 1969 to provide farmers with independent advice as to how to farm profitably, while respecting wildlife and the environment.

The Herefordshire group gives on-farm advice and arranges workshops and meetings to help keep farmers up-to-date with environmental legislative changes which affect the way they farm.

It also advises them how to mitigate the effects, while reducing their impact on the environment and wildlife habitats.

With climate change very much on the government’s agenda, it is determined to reduce the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions and has highlighted the agricultural industry as a significant contributor.

It is now bringing pressure on farming to reduce its emissions, particularly of methane and nitrous oxide.

Last week, Herefordshire FWAG held a meeting to show how farmers could reduce their impact on climate change, while at the same time reducing their costs.

As part of the exercise, FWAG adviser Caroline Hanks explained how the computer exercise CALM, developed jointly between the CLA and Savills, can calculate a farm’s carbon footprint.

The program does this by feeding in information on the farm’s use of electricity and fuel and its emissions.

Caroline explained the information was easily inputted into a computer, which then processed the information on each enterprise, before reaching a total farm figure.

As well as showing where there was scope for reducing emissions, it also highlighted where costs could be reduced.

Methane is one of the most important greenhouse gas pollutants, with the main sources from cattle and sheep, landfill sites and the breakdown of organic matter in bogs and wetlands.

Statistics indicate that 36% of the UK’s methane is produced by cattle and sheep and the government is likely to impose targets to reduce it. The problem is that methane is a by-product of digestion in the rumen, which New Zealander Robert Carter has described as an animal mounted compost heap which processes fibrous feed such as grass into milk and meat.

The magnitude of the problem becomes apparent when UK land use figures are scrutinised.

Two thirds of the farmed land in the UK is under grass and the only way grass can be utilised is by sheep and cattle.

Permanent grassland and rough grazing in the hills and uplands covers 60% of the UK’s land which, if not grazed properly by cattle and sheep, would revert to bracken and scrub.

There is talk of changes to ruminant diets to reduce methane emissions. Although it is technically feasible to reduce methane from cattle and sheep in specific situations, most of the suggestions ignore the basic concept that the only way to utilise grassland is to graze it with cattle and sheep.

Two other speakers at the FWAG meeting spoke about alternative energy. Although the speakers were able to show there were systems available capable of producing electricity at less cost than via the grid – and systems which can produce heat at less cost than from oil – the capital cost often makes such installations impossible to justify other than for large-scale consumers.

David Curtis, Herefordshire FWAG’s vice-chairman, who chaired the meeting, summed it up in his opening remarks, when he pointed out that to get farmers to reduce their emissions, it “needs an economic driver in energy and cost saving”.

He added that farmers needed to see economic benefits in reducing their emissions as they regarded jargon such as carbon footprint meaningless.