“Who knows about the Science Based Targets Initiative?” was the question asked at a recent farmer meeting on the element of the moment: carbon.

I’m all over it, of course, but I didn’t want to embarrass the others, so I kept quiet.

It turns out it is something the food companies we supply have signed up to, which means they have promised to achieve net-zero carbon.

See also: Why ergot contamination of grain is higher than expected

About the author

Andrew Barr

Arable Farmer Focus writer

Andy Barr farms 700ha in a family partnership in Kent. Combinable crops amount to about 400ha and include milling wheat and malting barley in an increasingly varied rotation. He also grazes 800 Romney ewes and 40 Sussex cattle and the farm uses conservation agriculture methods.

Read more articles by Andrew Barr

Now farming is responsible for 50% of the carbon footprint of a loaf of bread, so they really need us if they are to achieve these reductions, and maybe we can grab some more of the value.

Reducing emissions is one part of the picture and removal from the atmosphere into the soil is another.

The measurement of the latter needs some further work as I have just completed another carbon audit and found that my sequestration calculation derived from soil organic matter tests completely dwarfed my emissions.

This seemed too good to be true, and indeed it was.

When I inputted one last field into the system, which had somehow been measured lower, it apparently completely wiped out all the gains I had made on the rest of the farm in the past 10 years.

However, I have hope. One of Defra’s latest suggestions at a non-farmer meeting – that of the Efra select committee – was that to increase our viability we should diversify into processing our produce.

In practice this is easier said than done. When we sold lamb direct, we spent more time and in the end made no more money.

I know of people who have given up small-scale oilseed rape oil production and two long-established local farm shops which have had to close recently.

Getting the production scale is tricky. Would even our largest co-operatives be able to buy an oilseed rape crush or a flour mill?

Other on-farm diversifications like letting buildings are easier, but of course it just means we are subsidising food production ourselves.