There seems every prospect that farming for carbon will have a strong role to play within Irish agriculture as the industry looks to the future.
Dr. Frank Mitloenher, an air quality specialist at the University of California (UC) Davis, has confirmed that large numbers of farmers in the US are now using carbon credits as a means of developing new income streams for their businesses.
“But the carbon involved cannot be counted a second time,” he explained.
“Credits are derived on the basis of additional carbon that farm businesses sequester relative to the management standards laid down for the region or country they are located in.
“But this carbon is then lost to the business, when it comes to calculating its resulting carbon footprint. The double counting of carbon will not be permitted.”
Mitloehner recently spoke to members of the Guild of Agricultural Journalists of Ireland.
While encouraging farmers to investigate the potential for carbon credit generation within their businesses, he specifically highlighted their dynamic nature.
“If a national or regional authority enhances the legal standards expected of farmers, from a farming for carbon perspective, the criteria within which specific credits are defined may be tweaked accordingly,” he said.
Farming for carbon
Meanwhile Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI) research scientist, Prof. Elizabeth Magowan, is very wary of farmers committing to carbon credits at the present time.
“In the first instance, stronger market regulation is required. The science involved is also at a very early stage of development,” she said.
“There is also the issue of farmers needing to keep the carbon they sequester for inclusion in the carbon footprint calculations carried out for their own farms.”
However, Prof. John Gilliland, the man in charge of Northern Ireland’s ARCZero project, believes strongly that farming for carbon will become a significant income stream in its own right for Irish farmers.
“Carbon credits will have a real value moving forward. And this is a business opportunity that every farmer should be availing of,” he said.
“However, this will only happen when farm businesses can clearly confirm the values of carbon they are actively sequestering on an annual basis.
“In other words, they must know the baseline carbon storage figure for their farms and build accordingly from that point.”
Gilliland and Mitloenher are totally at one, where this latter point is concerned.
The UC Davis academic told Guild of Agricultural Journalists members that comprehensive data on the actual levels of sequestration taking place in soils around the world must be secured as a matter of priority.