Establishing a joined-up approach for environmental data

The first priority is to establish a joined-up approach to address carbon calculator data to meet the needs of farmers and their customers.

This could then be extended to other environmental data once established. AHDB is exploring a number of options, and it is likely that each country of the UK will have a slightly different solution.

For example, Northern Ireland’s government-funded Carbon Footprinting Project will be adopting one farm carbon calculator.

It is important that these country-specific solutions have the ability to share data to provide aggregated data on a UK basis where they agreed to be the data owner.

Several approaches to farm-level environmental data are possible.

The radical approach is to build a single database or data ecosystem containing all the farm-level data to meet farmer, supply chain and government needs, beyond just the environment.

While appealing, this lofty ambition is probably less practical than focusing on a single objective and connecting existing data systems.

On behalf of our levy payers, we will be working with the farming unions, levy bodies and other industry organisations across the UK to develop options for a solution to collating environmental data for farmers and the supply chain.

This process includes engaging with stakeholders across the agri-food supply chain from farmers, processors, millers, feed companies, etc. to retailers and governments.

Our focus is on a solution for England, but we will work with organisations across all four nations of the UK to find a coordinated solution for UK connectivity.

It is vital that a solution is not imposed on farmers or the rest of the supply chain without consultation, and we would welcome contact from any organisation with an interest in this area.

If you would like to contribute to our thinking or feel we have missed something, we would welcome your input.

For more information, contact environmental.data@ahdb.org.uk