Farmers belonging to the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group (FWAG) Cymru's premier membership scheme, FWAG Cyntaf, are keeping well ahead of the game by considering their farm carbon footprints. About 40 people, mainly farmers, attended a seminar on carbon management policies that was held at the Farmers' Arms, Waen, St Asaph on Wednesday, 28^th January. The event was chaired Ivor Beech, Vice Chairman of FWAG Cymru and supported by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and the Countryside Council for Wales.

The speaker was Gareth Edwards-Jones, Professor of Agriculture and Land Use at the School of the Environment and Natural Resources, Bangor University. He explained that carbon footprinting encompassed all the sources of the various greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide at various points along the food supply chain. Farmers are in the front line for managing climate change and will soon need to include carbon management as part of their future planning. This will necessitate change - bringing opportunities as well as obstacles.

The first step is to benchmark current performance. Earlier this year FWAG Cymru Farm Conservation Advisers had collected data from 25 FWAG Cyntaf farmers who had been invited to participate in a process that calculated carbon dioxide equivalent emissions from their farms, in partnership with Professor Gareth Edwards-Jones and his team at Bangor University. A more detailed picture has now been formulated from the initial analysis with each farm given a specific figure, or CO2 equivalent value. This method allows comparison between farms with different enterprises, working at different scales and between organic and conventional systems. Results can either be given per hectare or per product, for example per litre of milk.

The seminar used the results from this pilot group of FWAG Cyntaf farmers as a focal point for some lively and thought-provoking discussion with the future policies of the Welsh Assembly Government likely to place very high importance on the reduction of CO₂ emissions from farming.