Farming Footprints – turning knowledge into power

With the Fuel Quality Directive coming into force in early 2011, growers supplying wheat and oilseed rape for the biofuels market could be missing out on financial rewards by not having control over the information that they own.

The Directive is driving a 6% reduction in the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production of transport fuels. British farmers should be able to earn good bonuses from producing low carbon feedstocks but first they must be able to measure their performance.

We’ve developed a tool to help biofuel growers that links each consignment of grain to the carbon emissions associated with its production – it’s called Farming Footprints. 

The first stage is to get the usual field data into a program that can calculate the carbon efficiency. The data is all readily available on most farms and should be relatively easy to dump into Farming Footprints.
 
Today there is no value in the output other than allowing farmers to benchmark against neighbours, so there is no charge, but when the Fuel Quality Directive comes in, individuals could be able to negotiate a premium for high performing crops. There are many clichés like ‘you can’t manage until you measure’ or ‘knowledge is power’, but in this case they could be true.
 
Farming Footprints is a joint venture between Farmway, a farmer-controlled business in the North East of England and FiveBarGate, an energy consultant and has been set up to allow farmers to measure their carbon efficiency and trade the information generated.

Richard Martin is technical manager for Farming Footprints and has responsibility for technical services within Farmway.

Are you growing for the biofuels market? Do you know the carbon footprint of your crops? Tell us what you think about ‘low carbon’ crops, benchmarking and the Fuel Quality Directive. Email farming@forumforthefuture.org or call 020 7324 3671.

To find out more read our carbon accounting and arable fact sheets.