More support for farmers to calculate and reduce their emissions

Defra has pledged to develop a new harmonised approach for measuring on-farm emissions, in a bid to open up more opportunities for farmers in the carbon market.

The government has responded to calls from the farming sector for more support to open up the multi-billion pound carbon market.

It has pledged to develop a harmonised methodology and has set out by 2024 how farmers will be supported to measure their emissions.

It follows a call for evidence on the role of monitoring, reporting and verification of greenhouse gas emissions on farms.

Whilst there are already numerous tools on the market for farmers to assess their emissions, inconsistency in the results has led to low confidence from industry and low uptake.

The government's new Nature Markets Framework aims to support nature markets to grow in a way that makes them fair, effective and accessible to farmers.

Alongside this, the Green Finance Institute will develop an online toolkit to help farmers identify and access private payments for environmental benefits.

The government said it was also looking at how farmers could be given better advice to access nature markets, such as by supporting them to access advice through the Landscape Recovery development phase.

This would help farmers to access the more than £1 billion per year that the government is seeking to raise in private finance for nature’s recovery by 2030, and build on the projects which are already in place.

Farming Minister Mark Spencer said: "The measures will not only help them to calculate their carbon footprint, but also open up new financial opportunities, such as combining private commercial opportunities with our new farming schemes support.

"There is also an opportunity for farmers to access private sector funding for delivering positive outcomes for nature, which is why the government is also accelerating the growth of these nature markets through the Nature Markets Framework."

The measures will complement the existing support that the government has in place to help the agricultural sector reach net zero.

This includes support through Environmental Land Management schemes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from farms.