26 | SUSTAINABILITY
Carbon audit shows favourable results Another element of the society’s sustainability project was to assess members' and Hereford producers’ systems’ carbon efficiency, which showed participants to be at or above industry averages. Undetaking carbon audits, volunteers participating in the society's sustainability project worked with the team at Carbon Farm Toolkit to complete datasheets, collecting information about livestock type and number, crops grown, any inputs (eg. fertiliser, feeds, fuels), plus details on hedges, woodland, soil organic matter and waste management.
This was then entered into Farm Carbon Toolkit's tool to calculate the emissions and offsets to produce the carbon balance. Each volunteer was supplied with a full report, plus a summary produced by the project that highlighted hotspots. Liz explains: “The aim was to identify farms that were net zero, which means that their carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide emissions are being offset by carbon capture by their soil, hedges, trees and recycling. As you are aware, the NFU has outlined the ambition for the agricultural industry to be Net Zero by 2040, with retailers aiming for earlier, eg. Waitrose by 2035. “Table 1 shows the average results from the farms involved. The top three – emissions, offset and carbon balance – are influenced by farm size as they reflect the total for the whole farm for a full year. For the farms to be Net Zero, the carbon balance would be zero, meaning emissions and offsets are
balanced. It is worth noting that this is for the whole farm, not just the beef enterprise. “Carbon balance per hectare helps to adjust for farm size, with the average figure for the farms involved in this being three tonnes CO2e per hectare, which is lower than the current average benchmark from Carbon Farm Toolkit of 3.3.” Carbon balance per tonne of product helps to adjust for productivity and varies between <0.1 to 36 tonnes. With the fuel, fertiliser and water use ones providing guidance on resource use efficiency, with a lower number being better. An initial carbon audit is useful to establish a baseline for a farm and, similar to other types of technical or financial benchmarking, helps to highlight areas where data collection needs to be improved. Five hot spots were identified per farm
