Carbon Footprint

The number of tools and calculators available can be daunting. None are necessarily right or wrong, the appropriate tool for you depends on the question you are asking.

The National Inventory of Greenhouse Gas emissions is used for country level reporting using IPCC approach. The Carbon Disclosure Project is a main reporting body.

The standard methodologies for footprinting typically follow PAS 2050 or GHG Protocol guidance

Some of the most widely used carbon footprinting tools for farms and products in agriculture in the UK are:

ADAS is now running YEN Zero to calculate, compare and improve GHG intensities from cropping. ADAS has also launched HortZero for horticulture.

Share your experiences with Carbon Calculator tools in the comments below. 

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Content below is from across the PEP community and is not necessarily endorsed by Stewards or by PEP

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It is surprising that the calculators do not appear to have adopted some of the basics such as the UK tier three calculation for nitrogen fertiliser emissions. Is there a reason for this? It makes a big difference and along with the out of date global warming factors means that there is a risk of suboptimum investment decisions. 

As others say if you cannot measure accurately the quality of the decision making will be poor. 

 

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Connected Content

In 2015, the UK pledged to be Net Zero by 2050, with the NFU striving for the more ambitious target of 2040. Net Zero is achieved when the amount of greenhouse gases (GHG) emitted is balanced with those removed from the atmosphere. This helps to combat climate change and reduce global warming.

Opportunities are increasing for farmers and land managers to earn revenues from storing carbon in soils or vegetation, or by reducing baseline GHG emissions from crop and livestock production.

YEN Zero is a recently established network in the ADAS YEN Family, with the overarching aim of creating a net-zero community. It aims to bring key players from across the agricultural industry together to meet the industry’s target of achieving net zero emissions by 2040.

The Farm Carbon Toolkit was created by farmers for farmers. For over a decade, we’ve worked to further the understanding of greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture. We provide tools and services to measure impact and run projects with farmers that inspire action on the ground. Our vision is a farming sector that minimises its carbon emissions and maximises its carbon sequestration, whilst producing quality food and a wide range of public goods, all produced by resilient and profitable farm businesses. Some people call this vision a regenerative farming future.  

Carbon Metrics is a consultancy firm offering detailed analysis of agricultural carbon audits to help service sector businesses identify where on farm mitigation is both environmentally and commercially sustainable in order to help reduce the environmental impacts or greenhouse gases from farming enterprises

There is a lot of interest in soil carbon currently, due to the opportunity to store and sequester carbon in soil. It is also vital for soil health, forming part of soil organic matter.

Farm carbon calculator to lower emissions and increase productivity

Introduction   Climate change will significantly impact agriculture, forestry and the food industry, and the impact will change over time. The change in local and global climate conditions will impact the life cycle process of the agriculture and food industry, including the quality of seeds, growing seasons, crop maturity, livestock productivity, forest productivity, etc. The most critical impacts are the increased CO2 emissions due to growth in agricultural activities, the changing rainfall patterns, increased evaporative demand, reduced water availability for irrigation threatening all agricultural production, extended or repeated periods of drought, tree deaths, increased flooding, including that caused by sea-level rise, substantial losses in crop production in low-lying agricultural areas, soil compaction, waterlogging and soil erosion, and pests and diseases threatening the production.    Climate change will affect the range and quality of the ecosystem services that agriculture and forestry provide and rely on. They provide climate control, flood regulation, biodiversity, pollination and nutrient cycling. These sectors play a critical role in adapting to the change by introducing new healthy and resilient genotypes, varieties, breeds and management practices.    As the impact of climate change continues to be severe, there is a need for more anticipatory adaptation measures. Agriculture and forestry are components of larger biophysical, social and economic systems, reacting and adapting to climate change in different ways, resulting in complex global changes whose impacts at the local level are not easy to predict.   Conversely, the demand for agriculture and the food industry is growing, including to achieve the ‘No Hunger’ SDG 2 target, universal access to safe and nutritious food, end all forms of malnutrition, double the productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers, sustainable food production and resilient agricultural practices, maintain the genetic diversity in food production, invest in rural infrastructure, agricultural research, technology and gene banks, preventing agricultural trade restrictions, market distortions and export subsidies, and ensuring stable food commodity markets and timely access to information.   Thus, achieving food and nutritional security by increasing crop productivity while limiting carbon emissions is of utmost priority for every nation. This includes strengthening sustainable agri-food value chains, scaling up agri-food systems resilience, improving food security, and generating employment. While doing this, we must increase innovative practices and the creative and entrepreneurial skills of farmers worldwide to do their jobs and businesses effectively, foresee future scenarios and be prepared and resilient to climate and economic shocks.   This highlights an urgent need to identify an eco-friendly/cleaner consumption and production system that is more productive, profitable, resource-efficient (i.e. efficient use of energy, water, and carbon-based inputs), environmentally safer, balanced gender, accessible and inclusive of everyone, and resilient. Communities Carbon Calculator (CCC) Pilot Our proposal, Communities Carbon Calculator, is about designing eco-friendly and carbon-cum energy efficient, resilient and sustainable production and consumption systems for the diverse agroecosystems worldwide.   The primary concept is to have meaningful, interrelated, inter-sectoral collaborative four (4) Carbon Interventions: Carbon budgeting includes carbon reduction, using embodied carbon and reducing carbon waste for positive impact. Carbon mobilisation includes understanding the carbon dynamics throughout the processes, practices and products and applying technologies (natural, bio, chemical, mechanical, etc.) and fixing it for positive impact. Carbon literacy includes increasing the understanding and knowledge of the use of technologies (digital), theories and practices for a sustainable and resilient low-carbon sector. Carbon Sustainability includes developing local and global ecosystems for sustainable and resilient sectors.   CCC Pilot will focus on 1 region and four countries in this Pilot. However, we are open to more countries or regions joining the Pilot. We have started collecting interest from the global community, and if we get 20 stakeholders from a country, it will be included in the pilot.   For now, we have committed interest from: Region: The Congo Basin Countries: Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ouganda, Kenya, Ghana, Pakistan, Nigeria, Zambia, and Mongolia   The Global Sustainable Futures Progress through Partnerships Network calls partners/collaborators/individuals to join the optimised integrated COMMUNITIES CALCULATOR CARBON (CCC) Pilot. For Africa, our foremost partner is Actions for the Development of Africa - ADA, led by Bernard K. Mulenda. He is closely working with Professor Dr Mylor Ngoie on the interventions from the Universities over the region.   Country Carbon Calculator (CCC) Pilot will drive total transformation in systems at the country level. It will impact many other interrelated sectors, such as agriculture, water, waste, transport, energy, health, etc., developing in-country projects and integrating strategies for technology, subject expertise, innovation and commercialisation, including: Identifying and connecting with relevant stakeholders physically, socially and virtually, both at local, national and regional levels Advocating, encouraging, and negotiating with stakeholders to get involved in the program for managing carbon emission, business and innovative commodities, adopting an integrated approach and multi-area agreements Creating local, national and regional forums to attract all stakeholders (start-ups, technicians, experts) associated with business Facilitating carbon calculator development in-country, partnering with subject matter experts, academia, and technology experts The Carbon Calculator will be an online tool enabling every business manager detailing and supply chain actors to calculate the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and carbon storage into soil and biomass on the land area they are footprinting. It will account for all types of agriculture, food production and land use, producing a carbon balance detailing emissions into Scopes 1,2,3 emissions and carbon storage. A noticeable difference will be reflected in the quality of services, commercialisation, certification, carbon credits, crop diversity and inclusion of farmers, women and youth A scalable and innovative approach to connecting the countries as low-carbon, resilient and sustainable environmental, agriculture and food suppliers, health, manufacturing, etc. Seven WorkPlans WP1: To map the current resources in your country to create a farm carbon calculator WP2: To build a working model for piloting the carbon calculator WP3: To evaluate the CCC Pilot quarterly for its delivery of services/products/processes WP4: To measure the changes in the sector due to the innovative practices developed through CCC Pilot WP5: To measure the changes in related sectors such as agriculture, water, energy, transport, health nutrition, soil quality, housing, etc. through CCC Pilot WP6: To develop the learning/skill development/innovative practices knowledge exchange gathered through CCC Pilot WP7: To work with the stakeholders to improve decision-making for a resilient and sustainable industry   Please complete this form to express your interest: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScpkme0WNS-th6QGNcTTJ6d9vMZa2myFBixszOD4YYDLRq9Mg/viewform?usp=share_link Contact Dr Renuka Thakore, Founder and CEO, Global Sustainable Futures Network CIC, UK [email protected] https://www.linkedin.com/in/rbthakore/  

Lots of initiatives are measuring and reporting the carbon or greenhouse footprint of products or activities, including crops, livestock and food.

regenagri is an international regenerative agriculture program for securing the health of the land and the wealth of those who live on it.

Farmers Weekly article by Mike Abram exploring four carbon calculators

An overview of the greenhouse gas costs of cropping, including an analysis of YEN data in lead up to establishing YEN Zero.  Also includes an analysis of the relationship between nitrogen fertiliser, GHG costs, yield, GHG intensity and potential indirect land use change (ILUC) consequences. Part funded by the Morley Foundation.

This project aims to bring some clarity on the extent to which commonly used tools diverge in their estimates of carbon footprint for a range of well-defined reference systems.

Reducing your Carbon Footprint: Integrated approaches to reduce emissions and increase carbon sequestration

Climate change threatens our ability to ensure global food security, eradicate poverty and achieve sustainable development. In 2016, 31 percent of global emissions originating from human activity came from agrifood systems.

The key GHGs for agriculture that contribute directly to climate change are:  Carbon dioxide (CO2)  Methane (CH4)  Nitrous oxide (N2O)   All these GHGs are often grouped under the umbrella term ‘carbon’. 

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This Topic doesn't yet have a Stewarded summary, but connected groups, content and organisations show below. Click the 'Ask to Join' button if you would like to be a Steward for this Topic and provide a summary of current knowledge and recommend useful resources, organisations, networks and projects. "Like" this Topic if you would like to see it prioritised for providing a wikipedia style summary.

An overview of the greenhouse gas costs of cropping, including an analysis of YEN data in lead up to establishing YEN Zero.  Also includes an analysis of the relationship between nitrogen fertiliser, GHG costs, yield, GHG intensity and potential indirect land use change (ILUC) consequences.  

This page is designed to give information to PulsePEP community members on using the Farm Carbon Calculator from Farm Carbon Toolkit for carbon emission baselining as part of the Nitrogen Climate Smart Project.

Get your carbon questions answered as FarmED delve into the world of soil carbon, sequestration, net zero and carbon credits.

If you have signed up to PulsePEP, make sure to join the FREE @FarmCO2Toolkit online drop in sessions to help you to establish your carbon baseline. For more information on PulsePEP, follow this link. To sign up to PulsePEP, follow this link.

Review by NFU into carbon calculators - available to NFU members only

According to PAS 2050 Specification for lifecycle assessment of GHG emissions the increase in Soi

AHDB Research Review No 94. 2020.  By Elizabeth Stockdale and Vera Eory This high-

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Configure the meta tags below.

Use tokens to avoid redundant meta data and search engine penalization. For example, a 'keyword' value of "example" will be shown on all content using this configuration, whereas using the [node:field_keywords] automatically inserts the "keywords" values from the current entity (node, term, etc).

Browse available tokens.

Simple meta tags.

The text to display in the title bar of a visitor's web browser when they view this page. This meta tag may also be used as the title of the page when a visitor bookmarks or favorites this page, or as the page title in a search engine result. It is common to append '[site:name]' to the end of this, so the site's name is automatically added. It is recommended that the title is no greater than 55 - 65 characters long, including spaces.
A brief and concise summary of the page's content, preferably 150 characters or less. Where as the description meta tag may be used by search engines to display a snippet about the page in search results, the abstract tag may be used to archive a summary about the page. This meta tag is no longer supported by major search engines.

Meta tags that might not be needed by many sites.

Geo-spatial information in 'latitude; longitude' format, e.g. '50.167958; -97.133185'; see Wikipedia for details.
Geo-spatial information in 'latitude, longitude' format, e.g. '50.167958, -97.133185'; see Wikipedia for details.
Robots
A comma-separated list of keywords about the page. This meta tag is used as an indicator in Google News.
Highlight standout journalism on the web, especially for breaking news; used as an indicator in Google News. Warning: Don't abuse it, to be used a maximum of 7 times per calendar week!
This meta tag communicates with Google. There are currently two directives supported: 'nositelinkssearchbox' to not to show the sitelinks search box, and 'notranslate' to ask Google not to offer a translation of the page. Both options may be added, just separate them with a comma. See meta tags that Google understands for further details.
Used to rate content for audience appropriateness. This tag has little known influence on search engine rankings, but can be used by browsers, browser extensions, and apps. The most common options are general, mature, restricted, 14 years, safe for kids. If you follow the RTA Documentation you should enter RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-RTA
Indicate to search engines and other page scrapers whether or not links should be followed. See the W3C specifications for further details.
Tell search engines when to index the page again. Very few search engines support this tag, it is more useful to use an XML Sitemap file.
Control when the browser's internal cache of the current page should expire. The date must to be an RFC-1123-compliant date string that is represented in Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), e.g. 'Thu, 01 Sep 2016 00:12:56 GMT'. Set to '0' to stop the page being cached entirely.

The Open Graph meta tags are used to control how Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn and other social networking sites interpret the site's content.

The Facebook Sharing Debugger lets you preview how your content will look when it's shared to Facebook and debug any issues with your Open Graph tags.

The URL of an image which should represent the content. The image must be at least 200 x 200 pixels in size; 600 x 316 pixels is a recommended minimum size, and for best results use an image least 1200 x 630 pixels in size. Supports PNG, JPEG and GIF formats. Should not be used if og:image:url is used. Note: if multiple images are added many services (e.g. Facebook) will default to the largest image, not specifically the first one. Multiple values may be used, separated by a comma. Note: Tokens that return multiple values will be handled automatically. This will be able to extract the URL from an image field if the field is configured properly.
The URL of an video which should represent the content. For best results use a source that is at least 1200 x 630 pixels in size, but at least 600 x 316 pixels is a recommended minimum. Object types supported include video.episode, video.movie, video.other, and video.tv_show. Multiple values may be used, separated by a comma. Note: Tokens that return multiple values will be handled automatically.
A alternative version of og:image and has exactly the same requirements; only one needs to be used. Multiple values may be used, separated by a comma. Note: Tokens that return multiple values will be handled automatically. This will be able to extract the URL from an image field if the field is configured properly.
The secure URL (HTTPS) of an image which should represent the content. The image must be at least 200 x 200 pixels in size; 600 x 316 pixels is a recommended minimum size, and for best results use an image least 1200 x 630 pixels in size. Supports PNG, JPEG and GIF formats. Multiple values may be used, separated by a comma. Note: Tokens that return multiple values will be handled automatically. This will be able to extract the URL from an image field if the field is configured properly. Any URLs which start with "http://" will be converted to "https://".
The type of image referenced above. Should be either 'image/gif' for a GIF image, 'image/jpeg' for a JPG/JPEG image, or 'image/png' for a PNG image. Note: there should be one value for each image, and having more than there are images may cause problems.
The date this content was last modified, with an optional time value. Needs to be in ISO 8601 format. Can be the same as the 'Article modification date' tag.
The date this content was last modified, with an optional time value. Needs to be in ISO 8601 format.
The date this content will expire, with an optional time value. Needs to be in ISO 8601 format.

A set of meta tags specially for controlling the summaries displayed when content is shared on Twitter.

Notes:
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  • Media player card requires the 'title', 'description', 'media player URL', 'media player width', 'media player height' and 'image' fields,
  • Summary Card with Large Image card requires the 'Summary' field and the 'image' field,
  • Gallery Card requires all the 'Gallery Image' fields,
  • App Card requires the 'iPhone app ID' field, the 'iPad app ID' field and the 'Google Play app ID' field,
  • Product Card requires the 'description' field, the 'image' field, the 'Label 1' field, the 'Data 1' field, the 'Label 2' field and the 'Data 2' field.
A description that concisely summarizes the content of the page, as appropriate for presentation within a Tweet. Do not re-use the title text as the description, or use this field to describe the general services provided by the website. The string will be truncated, by Twitter, at the word to 200 characters.
By default Twitter tracks visitors when a tweet is embedded on a page using the official APIs. Setting this to 'on' will stop Twitter from tracking visitors.
The URL to a unique image representing the content of the page. Do not use a generic image such as your website logo, author photo, or other image that spans multiple pages. Images larger than 120x120px will be resized and cropped square based on longest dimension. Images smaller than 60x60px will not be shown. If the 'type' is set to Photo then the image must be at least 280x150px. This will be able to extract the URL from an image field if the field is configured properly.
The MIME type for the media contained in the stream URL, as defined by RFC 4337.