How carbon farming stacks up for the arable grower

Carbon farming is proving to be a useful additional revenue stream for cereal grower

Richard Davey

Midland Farmer: Why did you decide to look at carbon farming?

Richard Davey: We looked at regenerative farming first. We were aware of the carbon market and had already reduced our insecticides and herbicides.

The AgreenaCarbon scheme was attractive because it provided a useful income to help fund our transition to regenerative farming andit didn’t require us to make any changes to our farming practices.

MF: What regenerative farming practices are you deploying RD: We use very reduced cultivations to establish crops and a proportion of direct drilling and are reducing fungicides and insecticides where we can. To help the crop stay healthy we use trace elements, rather than fungicides as a blanket approach.

We only use fungicides as a secondary action if we have something we can’t control. And we try to correct crop deficiencies by spraying trace elements to the leaf at different times of the year.

We are also reducing fertiliser usage by using humic and fulvic acids in our liquid fertiliser and are looking to apply more amide nitrogen, which is more efficient. We adopted precision farming and use variable rate technology for fertilisers and seed, and are looking to do more when using fungicides and growth the process of understanding what’s possible and what we can get away with while keeping the yields and crop quality high.

MF: What advice did you take before embarking on the carbon scheme. RD: We first talked to Agreena in 2021 and one of our agronomists is forward thinking around the carbon market, so we were already interested. We could see that it fits in with what we were already doing and it seemed logical to take advantage of this emerging market via the AgreenaCarbon program. For us, there weren’t any negatives in joining.

MF: What revenue will you

The reduction in use of insecticides, where we can, is improving biodiversity across the farm and that will continue as we use less inputs.

Cover crops help cut leaching from the soil because it is not left bare. The soil is in even better condition, increasing absorption of rain water and hopefully will become more resilient when we have dry summers.

MF: Are you happy with the carbon scheme?

RD:Yes, more than happy. It’s relatively simple to join and doesn’t take long to enter the base data at the beginning, once you have worked out what information you need and where to find it.

It took us about half a day to input the original data and get the actuals done.

For us, transitioning to regenerative farming is the most logical way to farm and Agreena’s scheme sits alongside that by enabling farmers to benefit from the transition.

Initially, we thought it was going to compromise or complicate our method of farming but it has not. A new

Low Carbon Agriculture Show 2023

Agreena contract has helped –it is now more flexible. They’ve shifted from not allowing tilling at all to permitting reduced tilling every few years. But you don't receive certificates for the years you till.

The perception is that joining a carbon soil program means that you will have to farm in a certain way but with the flexibility of AgreenaCarbon this is not the case, it isn’t like other programs that have been restrictive and confusing.

Although carbon farming generates revenue for us, our first priority is making decisions that make sense for the farm.

MF: What, if anything, would make the AgreenaCarbon program better?

RD: A higher price for carbon certificates. Seriously, though, the only thing that comes to mind is that integration with crop recording systems would make it even easier. We use Gatekeeper which is the source of all the data we need to input into the AgreenaCarbon platform. If the two were linked it would be possible to import the data from one to the other. AgreenaCarbon sits alongside what we are already doing. It complements how we farm, we don’t have to worry about fitting into a tight box where we must do this here, and that there. It is a question of just farming and the carbon certificates will come.

About The Farm

Richard Davey farms

1,600ha in south Oxfordshire – including 488ha in an Agreena soil carbon scheme. Combinable crops include wheat, barley, oilseed rape, beans and forage maize.

Stand 318

Through the Future Farm Resillience Fund you can recieve a FREE carbon audit and we are also providing a FREE review of your farming business.

If you cannot make the show but are interested in any of the above, please contact: newmarket@laurencegould.com

Telephone Ian Thompson on 01383-730 538 or 07863-135 268