Carbon sale risks undermining ability of farms

WE have recently warned that carbon captured through tree planting risks joining a long list of Welsh natural resources which could be sold to outside companies and individuals seeking to make a profit. The problem is that land which already holds carbon or is already planted with trees has no value in terms of the current carbon market as it is treated as a baseline.

However, the value of the additional carbon captured on land newly planted with trees could be worth as much as £8,000 per hectare over the course of a carbon trading agreement - although this period could be many decades, bringing the annual value down significantly.

The value of such carbon is however also likely to rise as international companies seek to offset their carbon footprints rather than reduce their emissions. While superficially this is good news for some farmers, on almost a weekly basis we hear from those who wanted to buy neighbouring or nearby farmland but have been outbid by companies or individuals from outside Wales who aim to plant trees in order to cash in on this growing market.

While there are opportunities for farmers in this new market, Wales need only look at the past impacts of afforestation to see the potential for economic, social and environmental devastation as a result of inappropriate tree planting.

The GVA per hectare of Welsh commercial forestry is a fraction of that of agriculture, while agriculture employs around 150% more people per hectare than commercial forestry. However, in many cases we are not talking about commercial forestry - we are talking about broadleaf tree species that currently have a negligible economic value except for the sale of their carbon.

The sale of carbon in this way risks undermining the ability of farms, Welsh agriculture or Wales as a whole to become carbon neutral. When a piece of farmland is sold and planted with trees it is no longer officially available to the agricultural sector for offsetting emissions, and if someone plants trees on Welsh land and sells the carbon to a multinational company based in California, then this does nothing to help Wales reduce its carbon footprint.

We also know that Welsh Government Glastir Woodland Creation (GWC) scheme money was often used to pay for tree planting on Welsh farmland bought by outside investors. This concern was confirmed in a recent Welsh Government response to a Senedd question by Plaid Cymru agriculture spokesperson Cefin Campbell, which revealed that between GWC application windows 8 (November 2019) and 10 (November 2020) the number of applicants with addresses outside Wales grew from 3% to 8%.

It was also revealed that between windows 8 (November 2019) and 9 (March 2020) the proportion of land accepted for the GWC grant following applications from outside Wales rose from 10% to 16%.

This means that the areas of Welsh land planted under GWC by people with addresses from outside Wales are far larger than the areas being planted by people from within Wales. This is rapidly becoming a dangerous ‘land-grab’ issue and I can reassure members that the FUW continues to raise these concerns with the Welsh Government.