Blog: carbon

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Want to create a carbon woodland?
Trees are good: well-managed woodlands provide many benefits including sequestering carbon. As a result, individuals and businesses are keen to support tree planting, which adds up to an opportunity for farmers and land managers. But how ca...
Vicky West, Forestry Commission~Tuesday, 25 October, 2011 - 11:14  |  0 comments
RHI takes the heat off investing in renewables
The launch of the Renewable Heat Incentive on 10th March was welcome news to many farmers and rural businesses. Farmers can now invest in renewable heat technologies, reduce their costs and carbon footprints.The £860 million government scheme i...
Rebecca Seaman~Friday, 18 March, 2011 - 09:49  |  2 comments
Carbon storage = bigger veg = happy farmers?
A new heat and power box stores CO2 in tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers while delivering electricity to nearby homes. A British company, Alfagy Ltd., is launching a new heat and power plant in a box. Aptly named ‘The Green Box’, the d...
Claire Wyatt~Monday, 7 March, 2011 - 09:44  |  0 comments
A cloud over our communities?
Imagine you are a community energy entrepreneur in the UK. How will you be feeling after the government’s action to tackle the “solar farm threat”?You’ve said no to going to the pub at weekends more times than you can remember...
Will Dawson~Friday, 4 March, 2011 - 09:44  |  0 comments
Barriers to low carbon farming - your thoughts wanted
Here at Cottage Farm we have demonstrated that it is perfectly possible to farm sustainably and in a resilient manner, that is organically, without using fossil fuels but still utilising machinery and energy. The best place to find out what else we a...
Paul Sousek~Tuesday, 1 March, 2011 - 18:20  |  0 comments
New funding now available for Yorkshire farmers
Farmers in Yorkshire can apply for RDPE funding for equipment that will help them save money and be more efficient, it was announced this week.Farms can get up to £25,000 to spend on new equipment that will help them use less energy or fewer ra...
Claire Wyatt~Wednesday, 2 February, 2011 - 11:27  |  0 comments
Food system revolution...who’s hungry?
One of the most striking things about the obesity report that the Foresight team produced in 2007 was the fiendishly detailed ‘systems map’ developed by the research team. For me, one of the most striking things about  the launch of...
Julian Hunt~Tuesday, 1 February, 2011 - 10:33  |  0 comments
Who are the dynamos and who are the dinosaurs?
Attending the Oxford Farming Conference for the first time it was my intention to absorb every bit of information thrown at me but it was the very first person that I met who gave the most pertinent piece of advice, “Establish who are the dynam...
Patrick Barker~Friday, 21 January, 2011 - 09:32  |  0 comments
Prof Tim Lang on why we should see food security as sustainability
The only way to achieve food security is to have a sustainable food system. That’s the message from Professor Tim Lang of City University’s Centre for Food Policy, who we met at the Inside Government Food Security Conference back in Novem...
Will Frazer~Thursday, 20 January, 2011 - 15:09  |  0 comments
Climate news and knowledge #14
Climate News and Knowledge is our fortnightly round up of some of the main stories covering climate change and sustainable farming. This time there is talk of rising food prices, solar farms (again), satellite observations and whether we will chang...
Will Frazer~Friday, 14 January, 2011 - 09:23  |  0 comments
The challenge facing the next generation
The issues of food, farming and population are undeniably immense. The combination of population growth, land and water shortages, along with climate change and peak oil are the challenges that our generation of farmers are facing. So I was really ho...
Angharad Evans~Tuesday, 11 January, 2011 - 14:50  |  1 comments
The threat that dare not speak its name
Crowd of people Climate change is everywhere, Peak Oil is rising on the political agenda, the fate of the economy is still uncertain, resource wars are looming and yet still very few people mention the elephant in the room that could be the root cause of it all; pop...
Claire Wyatt~Friday, 7 January, 2011 - 13:18  |  1 comments
An energy crop that cleans toxic soil?
Green grass Australian researchers have developed a fast-growing giant napier grass that cleans up toxic soil, and can also be converted to ethanol for transport or combusted for electricity. Grown at an experimental plantation at Shaoguan University in China, t...
Madeleine Lewis~Tuesday, 4 January, 2011 - 09:00  |  0 comments
Climate change - it's snow joke
Tractor in snow Back in the middle of November, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research released a rather gloriously timed piece of work. “Global Warming could cool down temperatures in winter” said the headline just a matter of days before the snow h...
Madeleine Lewis~Thursday, 23 December, 2010 - 09:00  |  0 comments
21st century farming versus 20th century attitudes
Highland cattle As a young couple, both from farming families in the Staffordshire Moorlands, we were keen to put our own stamp on our new farming enterprise. We purchased land that had been intensively farmed, and our aim is to lovingly restore it and farm with the...
Catherine Webster~Wednesday, 15 December, 2010 - 09:08  |  0 comments
Oxfordshire farmers get together on climate
Farmers are notoriously busy and time constrained. From feeding the world, GM crops and new technology, to better communications and different scales of production – there is plenty to think about. And for an eclectic mix of farmers, clerics an...
Alan Spedding~Wednesday, 1 December, 2010 - 16:27  |  0 comments
Farming conversations from across the pond
Thanks to funding from the Food & Farming Forum Yorkshire and Humber, I was recently lucky enough travel to San Francisco to attend a conference on Sustainable Agricultural Partnerships. As a UK farmer this was a unique opportunity to step out of...
David Hugill~Monday, 15 November, 2010 - 15:54  |  2 comments
Farmers – we need to turn the energy market upside down
By 2050 electricity demand will at least double current levels, and simultaneously, the UK is legally bound to reducing carbon emissions by 80%. This means we’re going to see an increasing electrification of every part of our energy network. He...
Juliet Davenport~Thursday, 28 October, 2010 - 14:03  |  0 comments
Sustainable livestock: the benefits of big
Let’s be clear – big livestock units are not bound to be bad. It depends, as with small units, how well designed they are and how well run they are. The vast majority of the UK public enjoys eating livestock products and values them as an...
Dr Duncan Pullar~Friday, 22 October, 2010 - 16:35  |  0 comments
Biotechnology – magic bullet or smoke and mirrors?
A technology that boosts yields whilst using less energy and water, and simultaneously increases soil fertility? Sounds like a magic bullet in our climate changed world, doesn’t it? Some argue that this is what biotechnology offers, but is it t...
Will Frazer~Wednesday, 20 October, 2010 - 08:00  |  1 comments