The term “net zero” often prompts mixed reactions in the farming community. At Baileys and Partners, we understand that many livestock farmers are unsure how the carbon conversation applies to them, or whether it offers any tangible benefits. That’s why we decided to go through the process ourselves — to better understand it, and to better support our clients. Conscious that we were discussing carbon audits, sustainable farming practices, regenerative farming and carbon markets with our clients we thought we had best practice what we preach (albeit on a smaller scale!).
Recently, we embraced the opportunity to assess our own carbon footprint by participating in the Green Digital Academy – a fully funded initiative helping businesses evaluate emissions, identify training needs, and develop realistic carbon reduction plans. The process, while different in scale and service offering to farming businesses, offered useful parallels.
In a similar way to a farm audit Baileys and Partners supplied information about our energy use and ways of working to Greener Edge who then helped us understand and evaluate our carbon emissions.
Emissions for businesses are broken down into Scope 1, 2 and 3; Scope 1 Direct emissions— from sources that are directly owned or controlled by the business, for example the emissions from fuel in a tractor or methane produced from an animal. For a livestock farm, Scope 1 emissions are usually the largest emitter of carbon.
Scope 2 Indirect energy emissions — These are the emissions from indirect sources. For example, electricity purchased from the grid for heating buildings or for a milk cooling plate on a dairy farm.
Scope 3 emissions — Now here’s where it gets tricky. In this category go all the emissions from the wider supply chain but are also associated with the business. For example, buying a new laptop or a common farm example would be purchasing vet and meds. Scope 3 emissions are usually high for service businesses like Baileys and Partners, less so for livestock farms.
The process of assessing Baileys and Partners carbon footprint has been informative, from data collection and assessing what is available to make the assessments, reviewing what changes are within our control to make, what it means when we make those changes, and what we can claim about our green credentials.
Our overall goals and commercial objectives are to establish whether this process can help us improve the health of our business (cost savings and potentially increased turnover) whilst reducing carbon emissions and environmental impacts, by creating a carbon reduction plan. Our carbon audit concluded that our scope 1 emissions were zero, scope 2 emissions minimal and scope 3 being 99% of our business emissions. We created a short-, mid- and long-term action plan, we aren’t chasing perfection, but more pinpointing areas of improvement.
Alongside the Green Digital Academy, we have been a member of the Net Zero North Wales Network for several years. Our involvement with Net Zero North Wales Network is useful in identifying how other businesses are navigating the net zero journey and sharing experiences of how they are benefiting from different opportunities and savings.
The Welsh Government’s Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS) purports to support farmers in Wales to achieve net zero targets. This new scheme which is expected to be launched in 2026, is said to encourage farmers to conduct a carbon audit. After a challenging and very politically unpredictable period for farming, our farming clients can be forgiven for adopting a cautious and possibly sceptical approach to anything that resembles more paperwork and complexity. Our findings so far have been positive and we would encourage our clients to use carbon auditing as an opportunity to identify cost savings and potential new income stream. In order to best place your business to make the most of this opportunity our initial findings based on our own journey is to ensure that our farming clients maintain as many enterprise records as possible going forward such that this data can help inform the carbon audit.
Our focus will be on taking small but rewarding actions and make decarbonisation a part of the business journey going forward. We are in a good place to help our clients with their carbon audits, sustainable farming practices, regenerative farming and analysis of carbon markets.
We look forward to working with you on your carbon audit journey and importantly identifying commercial opportunities along the way. If we can help you please contact Jodie and the Baileys and Partners team for further details 01341 241700 enquiries@baileysandpartners.co.uk
