European farmers will need to wake up to the fact that policy makers have the greenhouse gas emissions of EU farmers in their sights, and embrace the thinking, suggests Dr Jan Dick, Director of SEE360, a company dedicated to raising awareness of farmers to the impact the greenhouse gas issue.

The Le Foll report due to be voted on in early March clearly shows the direction EU policy makers are travelling. The Le Foll report states “EU agriculture can make a threefold contribution to the Union’s global warming mitigation objectives: finding ways to limit and reduce its own GHG emissions, promoting carbon storage in the soil and developing the production of sustainable renewable energies”

“National governments are beginning to recognise the win:win nature of this debate by increasing farmers efficiency they will reduce their greenhouse gas emissions per unit of output” commented Dr Dick.

Innovative farmers have been calculating their greenhouse gas emissions using the IPCC, PAS2050 compliant CPLAN model since 2007 (the first agricultural web-based calculator) and have calculated for themselves the measures necessary to reduce their carbon footprint while increasing profitability.

“Innovative farmers we have worked with have seen the writing on the wall and, although not necessarily implementing the measures yet, they now know what they could do” commented Dr Coulter. Some of the technologies like anaerobic digesters are capital intensive but others like precision fertilising application can pay for itself within a few years. Other measures like increased soil storage of carbon has potential but the reward to farmers is not yet clear.

“Farmers should not be scared of the greenhouse gas issue” commented Drew Coulter, a mixed livestock farmer in central Scotland “agriculture has a positive story to tell “.

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