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 nation's 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, we 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.

Working with 178 farms, the five-year pilot aims to build a robust baseline of environmental data to improve how we understand, account for and manage greenhouse emissions and carbon 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.

Use our planner to understand where the risks may be to your farm and to identify measures you can take to make it resilient to climate impacts.