Imagine that the food you bought came from farms that were absorbing carbon from the atmosphere – carbon that you and everyone else is emitting, which causes climate change. Furthermore, imagine those farms were profitable, supported lots of biodiversity, produced high quality food and managed water in the landscape. This can become reality through the widespread adoption of Carbon Farming. If scaled up world wide, Carbon Farming offers planet-scale solutions in tackling climate change, improving food quality, reducing water use and making farms more profitable.
How Carbon Farming works
Farms can absorb vast amounts of carbon dioxide in their soil and biomass. This is the main principle of Carbon Farming, and is a genuine solution to our urgent need to cut atmospheric carbon dioxide levels that are causing climate change. This project will uncover tried and tested Carbon Farming methods that farmers can implement with confidence.
Most farms are carbon negative, emitting more carbon than they absorb. By switching to Carbon Farming, farms can become carbon positive, absorbing more carbon than they emit. But for farmers to make these changes they need to understand the techniques, and be confident that these are practical, tried and tested, and profitable.
What we want to do
By carefully monitoring and advising 10 diverse trial farms across the UK, over two to three years, we can give many other farmers the confidence they need to implement Carbon Farming techniques. We will be carefully monitoring the carbon footprint of the trial farms, as well as soil organic matter levels throughout the project. We'll ask them what practices work for them and what impact it's having on their businesses. These tried and tested methods, backed up by evidence, are what farmers really need to make long term decisions.
We also want to improve the Farm Carbon Calculator, our free tool for farmers and growers to accurately work out their carbon emissions and sequestration. It's one of the best tools out there and we can make it even better. It's free for everyone and is designed by farmers so that it's easy to use. By making it even better we can get more farmers using it, and taking action to reduce their carbon footprint.
The best thing about Carbon Farming is that it's a win-win solution. Not only does it absorb carbon dioxide, there are substantial benefits for soil health, soil quality, biodiversity, water quality, food quality and farm profitability.
So what are we waiting for?! When farmers understand the benefits, have confidence in the techniques and see it working for others, widespread adoption of Carbon Farming could be just around the corner.
Together we can kick start a Carbon Farming revolution that works for farmers, society and the planet.
End of project event
At the end of the project there will be a large event where farmers who have been involved in the trials, other interested farmers, researchers, media, policy makers and project supporters will all come together to learn about the outcomes of the project, share findings and discuss future work topics. This will be fully recorded and disseminated for others to benefit from this project.
Funding
To make this project work we have set a fundraising target of £20,000. The interim targets mean if we raise the following we can achieve:
- £3,000: improve and update our unqiue Carbon Calculator, and monitor one trial farm for two years
- £6,000: improve and update our unqiue Carbon Calculator, and monitor three trial farms for two years
- £9,000: improve and update our unqiue Carbon Calculator, monitor four trial farms for two years, make videos to share, and organise three events to share experiences with other farmers
- £12,000: improve and update our unqiue Carbon Calculator, monitor five trial farms for two years, make videos to share, organise two events to share experiences with other farmers, and produce full annual reports to help disseminate information about the project
- £15,000: improve and update our unqiue Carbon Calculator, monitor seven trial farms for two years, make videos to share, organise four events to share experiences with other farmers, and produce full annual reports to help disseminate information about the project
- £20,000: improve and update our unqiue Carbon Calculator, monitor ten trial farms for two years, make videos to share, organise six events to share experiences with other farmers, and produce full annual reports to help disseminate information about the project
Should we be even more successful than we hope, we have a stretch target of £27,500. This will also enable us to:
- Run the project for an extra year (3 years in total)
- Run four more events for farmers, and make recordings of the event available to everyone
- Improve the science underpinning the results due to more available samples and data. This will further enhance the project's credibility with farmers and policy makers.
For more details on the project please visit our website http://farmcarbontoolkit.org.uk/carbon-farming-positive-change-ground