Mapping carbon for more efficient production – British Dairying
TerraMap Carbon is the UK’s first carbon mapping service to help farmers obtain more accurate Carbon baseline measurements ...
The pressure for UK farming plc to manage carbon is only going to become greater as other industries are already showing positive change. However, as an industry, UK farming is in a unique and enviable position as farming activities can make positive changes to carbon, which most other industries are not able to do, and this is a really significant factor,” explains Matt Ward, Hutchinsons Services Manager.
“This challenge comes at a time when the arable industry is facing great change in the light of the loss of basic farm payment, and farmers may well be questioning the importance or relevance of carbon management as potential profit margins are threatened.
“It’s crucial that we move away from seeing carbon footprinting as a burden or simply a tick-box exercise and see that it is beneficial – as a proxy measurement for efficiency and profitability of a farm as well as simply a measure of waste.
“It’s clear that there are benefits such as lower input costs to having a negative carbon balance, before even getting to the carbon bit itself. A reduced carbon footprint can only be achieved through more efficient fertiliser use, different technologies, better soil management or considering the energy used in storage, so it’s a win-win on all levels.”
However to manage Carbon we have to measure it – until now there has been no accurate means of measuring carbon in the soil. Hutchinsons has been investing heavily in developing services and technologies that can be utilised at farm level to allow farmers to work towards these goals – and the development of TerraMap Carbon is an exciting and unique development that reflects this approach.
TerraMap Carbon the first ever carbon mapping service to provide the most accurate baseline measurement of both organic and active carbon in the soil and is now available to UK farmers.
Organic carbon
This is mainly stable and takes the soil many years to build up and degrade, making it relatively resistant to change. It includes active carbon. This is expressed as:
- Percentage total carbon
- t/ha total carbon
Active carbon
This is readily disrupted and includes microbes that break down organic matter. It accounts for up to 5% of organic carbon in the soil pool. This is expressed as:
- Percentage active carbon
- t/ha active carbon
TerraMap Carbon is available as a standard or premium service. The standard service maps a total of 17 micronutrients soil type & pH layers that now also includes total organic carbon in terms of percentage carbon and tonnes/ha.
The premium service maps 27 layers which includes a wider range of micronutrients than those in the standard service, and also cation exchange, and now both total organic and active carbon percentage and tonnes/ha – that is the percentage of carbon that’s active in the soil.
Helen Dent, Hutchinsons Agronomist in Cumbria, believes that dairy farms are especially under pressure from society with regards to demonstrating a positive carbon footprint and recognises that up to now it has been a challenge to demonstrate the ability of soils and grassland to sequester carbon.
“We know that grassland provides one of the best possible forms of carbon storage,and is actually considered to be a more reliable sink than woodland/forests.
“For example, using TerraMap we have found some of the grassland fields in Cumbria that have had slurry and manure frequently applied from dairy operations, to have carbon levels of up to 108.87t/ha – which is exceptional on a conventional system.”
Using TerraMap it is also possible to measure the variation in carbon over a field, she adds. “Taking carbon samples per field like traditional soil sampling is good – but carbon is so variable over even small field sizes and that is not picked up.
“I have one 3.25ha field that has been TerraMapped and the carbon levels varied from 40 up to 80t/ha carbon across the field. However, if we were just taking one sample per field using a more traditional approach, this variation would not show up and the measurement taken therefore is really inaccurate.
“Using Terra Map it is also possible to target fertiliser use more accurately – targeting inputs only where they are required, and in turn produce home-grown forage as efficiently as possible – this helps improve the whole farm carbon balance.”
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