Tool to lower farm carbon emissions

King Country farmer Laurie Pottinger reckons a new tool allowing farmers to estimate how much carbon their tree blocks are absorbing will come in useful and save money.

Developed as an add-on to the Overseer nutrient manager, the tool uses data from the Ministry for Primary Industries to estimate the carbon storage potential for existing and future tree blocks on a farm.

Pottinger said while it was possible to estimate carbon storage yourself, the tool made it easy to test emissions and the impacts of farm management changes before they are made.

At present if farmers wanted to know their carbon footprint they usually go to a consultant.

Pottinger is himself one.

‘‘You could work it out yourself, but it’s a lot of work. As we have more regulation coming on,

then the uptake will be a lot more,’’ he said.

Overseer chief executive Caroline Read said the add-on had been developed in response to farmers wanting a tool to help them make more informed decisions over the impact of planting tree blocks.

It will be no additional cost to the Overseer annual subscription cost of $200 and is the only one on the market.

It will not be able to be used for emissions trading reporting, and nor does it include storage from soil, wetlands, riparian margins or forest management practice changes. Read said the company was working to develop future

options. Pottinger said farming needed to lower its carbon footprint.

‘‘We have a little bit of forestry, we changed from dairy farming to fattening beef in the last couple of years, which has been more damaging to the hillsides than the dairy farming was, so we’ve got about 5 per cent of our farm that needs to be retired.’’

He did not agree with the policy as it stood that did not allow farmers who had native forest regenerating to claim carbon credits off them. On Overseer generally, Pottinger said the nutrient management tool had saved him significant sums.