WEBINAR: Carbon markets – a sequestration v food dilemma, or a big opportunity?

The UK’s carbon market is many things: Some say it offers huge potential to create multi-functional landscapes that sequester carbon, still produce food, and offer vital income streams to farmers and land managers. Others say it’s the ‘Wild West’, with unscrupulous companies, dodgy measuring tools, and the potential for land grabs and reduced food production. Which is it, if any, of these? And what really is the potential to use the UK’s farmland to sequester carbon? As a farmer, what are the challenges and opportunities of selling carbon? What’s the experience of those who’ve done it?
In this webinar we discuss all of this with our two speakers:
Emily Norton, former director of rural research at Savills and Oxford Farming Conference director, and now freelance consultant and commentator, is known for her knowledge, prodding questions, and critical thinking.
​Jake Freestone, farmer and co-founder of The Green Farm Collective, a collaboration between six pioneering UK farmers who met via the Soil Farmer of the Year competition. In partnership with carbon broker, Trinity Natural Capital Markets, they are building a community of farmers and investors to supply and buy carbon.

Emily covers:

• Scene setting: Market maturity and development - is it still the ‘Wild West’?
• Risks/ opportunities - Business opportunities & risks for farmers/ land managers 
• Data – the need for accurate & universal measurement & collection
• Leaving it to the market – is the government’s approach right?
• Food v sequestration – do we have ‘carbon tunnel vision’?
• Risks of land grabs/ change in land use
• Are carbon markets a ‘right to pollute’?
• Should we even be commodifying nature?
• What needs to happen (policy, tools, regs, standards) to improve carbon market/ sequestration?

Jake covers:

• What the Green Farm Collective (GFC) is, who is behind it, and why it was formed
• How the GFC works with farmers and investors
• Practicalities – farming practices, key indicators, business implications (fertiliser and cultivations)
• How and what data is collected and recorded
• Tools – thoughts on accessibility/cost for farmers, and accuracy for investors
• Challenges the GFC has faced entering the carbon market
• Thoughts on the scale opportunity for farmers
• Lessons learnt from setting up GFC
• Farm business perspective on carbon market regulation and standardisation v leaving it to the free market – what are the risks and rewards of each?
• Current barriers faced by farmers to entering the carbon market
• What needs to happen to develop a robust carbon market that works for farmers, communities, and investors?

​The seminar is chaired by Prof Neil Ward, a Co-lead of the AFN Network+, professor at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, and author of Net Zero, Food and Farming: Climate Change and the UK Agri-Food System (Routledge 2023).

​About the webinar series:
This webinar is part of a series run by AFN Network+ and put together by knowledge exchange fellow, Jez Fredenburgh, also based at the Tyndall Centre, at UEA, and who brings a decade of experience as an agri-food journalist. Follow Jez on Twitter.
The series explores net zero in the UK agri-food system with leading movers and shakers – you can expect deep and varied insight from across the sector, including farmers, scientists, policy analysts, community leaders, retailers, politicians, businesses and health professionals.
If you’d like to suggest a speaker or topic, get in touch with Jez – j.fredenburgh@uea.ac.uk or on Twitter.
Watch past webinars here.