The environment

From soil health to slurry storage to net zero, our resources can help you to make your business more productive and profitable, while providing public goods like affordable food, carbon removals and nature recovery.

The effects of global warming on our climate is impacting farmers more than most, with extreme weather becoming more and more frequent. Driven by the burning of fossil fuels and the growing demands of an increasingly wealthy global population.

But other factors like land use change, habitat and biodiversity loss, pollution, and soil and resource depletion are also having an impact on the natural world. As a result, as custodians of 70% of the Nations land, UK farmers are being asked to deliver more for the benefit of society.

To enable farmers to provide these public goods like affordable food, carbon removals and nature recovery, a whole environment approach must be adopted. With that, AHDB will work so that reporting reflects these positive actions, bringing farming the recognition it deserves.

Three ways to improve the environment and resilience of your farm business: 

• Baselining – You can only manage what you measure, so measure what you have.
• Net zero – Balance how much carbon your farm business releases vs how much it removes.
• Public goods – Delivering multiple goods and services for society requires a holistic approach.

Our industry-first pilot will empower farmers and strengthen British agriculture with new environmental data. It will establish the amount of net carbon on a range of different farms and land uses, taking account of carbon stored in soil, hedges and trees, as well as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and sequestration.  The information will redefine how farming’s environmental contribution is recognised, and provide a starting point for tracking change in GHG emissions and carbon sequestration over time, identifying where there are opportunities to make improvements on farm. 

The roadmaps represent the environmental ambitions and commitments made by our agricultural sectors. They aim to improve the environmental sustainability of British agriculture while ensuring the continued prosperity of their sectors.

Here you can find guides to practical, on-farm actions that will help reduce GHG emissions, which also outline the wider environmental, productivity and financial benefits. Many of these activities are already best practice for a lot of farmers, however they might not be aware of the full environmental benefit of their actions over and above GHG reduction. 

AHDB works with levy payers, policy makers and others in the food supply chain to improve agriculture’s environmental impact and overall sustainability. While demonstrating that environmental efficiency can also bring with it economic opportunities.

We support our farmers with the evidence and tools to inform their business decisions, and help build capacity to deliver safe, secure, and sustainable food within a healthy and diverse landscape.