Farm accounts will change forever from next month – when instead of dusty ledgers and cheque stubs, important calculations will be based around green house gas emission and carbon sequestration.
The change will come about largely thanks to a new – and free - web-based calculator which will allow farmers and land managers work out their carbon accounts – which the CLA, the rural economy experts, say will eventually become as important as profit and loss accounts.
The calculator is the result of a project led by the CLA, working in partnership with Savills and supported by the East of England Development Agency, and the Crown Estates.
It is the first free business-based calculator which shows the balance between annual emissions and carbon sequestration of the key greenhouse gases associated with the activities of individual land-based businesses.
CLA Policy Director, Allan Buckwell, will give a demonstration of how the calculator works and what it can do at a media launch in London on Thursday March 6th when he will explain how understanding the carbon footprint of a business will help guide management decisions that may mitigate GHG emissions.
"We know how long it took for profit and loss accounts to achieve a standardised format – so there are likely to be changes along the way but the fact is that farming and forestry are in the front line of climate change, they depend critically on the climate for the production of their outputs while agriculture, land use change and forestry generate about 7% of UK greenhouse gas emissions.
"This calculator offers a free, business-based approach for farms and estates and it is quite distinct from carbon footprint calculators devised for specific products. It follows the most widely used, internationally agreed, accounting guidelines for government and businesses to understand quantify and manage GHG emissions," he said.