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<p>In June 2019, the Environment Agency published a State of the Environment: Soil
Report, which identified that intensive agriculture, such as ploughing up permanent
pasture for arable crops or temporary grassland, usually reduces soil organic matter
(including carbon).</p><p> </p><p>We are paying for a range of actions through farming
schemes such as Sustainable Farming Incentive to support farm decarbonisation and
Countryside Stewardship and Landscape Recovery to store more carbon in the landscape.
The schemes will help farmers deliver environmental outcomes on the land they manage
while helping their businesses become more productive and sustainable.</p><p> </p><p>Arable
soils are known to be more depleted in soil carbon than grasslands, so the potential
for future sequestration is lower in grasslands than when compared to arable soils.
Sampling to a meter’s depth is preferable so that as much of the soil carbon store
as possible may be measured. However, in order to provide a balance between practicality
and robust measurements, sampling to a depth of up to 40cm would generally be appropriate
as this is the depth to which most land management practices affect the soil profile
most significantly.</p><p> </p><p>Robust and accurate carbon audits which are based
on or from business-level data can be valuable in benchmarking performance, and help
farm businesses plan and action decarbonising measures and enhance management of negative
emissions. To help farmers confidently understand the emissions on their land and
take advantage of the new financial opportunities this will unlock, we are committed
to developing a harmonised approach to measuring carbon on farms. We are also considering
how we can best support the implementation of carbon audits through a controlled expansion
of the Defra Farming and Countryside Programme sustainable farming advice offer.</p><p>
</p><p>We recognise the challenges in improving the robustness and consistency of
carbon auditing tools. To help harmonise these tools and how they are used, Defra
is currently funding a 'Harmonisation of Carbon Accounting Tools for Agriculture'
project to assess differences between a number of market leading carbon calculators,
understand the causes of this divergence and how it impacts tool users and how to
improve harmonisation.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Defra is also working to provide
greater access to the calculations and the models developed as part of the UK’s Agricultural
Inventory of Ammonia and GHG Emissions to interested third parties. This will support
longer term alignment between the UK’s national GHG accounts and primary data gathered
from farms.</p>
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