The Farmers’ Union of Wales (FUW) is set to discuss the merits and drawbacks of limiting the amount of carbon credits that can be sold from Welsh land, carbon trading quotas and other approaches that might be applied in Wales.
During a recent meeting of the FUW Land Use and Parliamentary Committee, members expressed extreme concern that a large proportion of the carbon locked and sequestered in Welsh land could be sold to other countries and companies outside Wales, undermining the ability of Welsh agriculture or even Wales as a whole to become carbon neutral.
Delegates also highlighted ongoing concerns that Welsh farms are being purchased by companies from outside Wales in order to cash in on Wales’ carbon. Such concerns were recently reflected in a BBC report which revealed that twelve farms had been bought in mid Wales by companies outside of the country which aimed to largely plant trees on the land.
The committee agreed that a quota system should be introduced to reduce this risk, and it was agreed at a subsequent meeting of the FUW’s Presidential Policy Team that the pros and cons of such limits should be the subject of detailed discussion by all FUW Committee Chairmen and the Presidential Team.
Whilst the selling of carbon credits to businesses looking to offset their carbon emissions may represent a profitable option for some farmers, the same carbon cannot then be used to offset a farm’s own carbon emissions and meet net-zero targets.
However, members of the Union’s Presidential Policy Team highlighted the complexity and potential unforeseen consequences of introducing restrictions and quotas, as was seen with the introduction of milk quotas in the 1980s.
A key question is whether a proportion of the carbon sequestered on Welsh land should be ring-fenced to agriculture first and foremost, with a further proportion ringfenced to Welsh companies or bodies - or should it just be a free market without any such limits or quotas?
It is clearly a highly complex area with many factors to be considered, therefore, it will be discussed by the FUW’s twelve County Executive Committees and in a special meeting of Committee Chairmen and the Presidential Policy Team in order to investigate what policy options the Union should support in order to protect both the short and long term interests of the farming industry and Wales as a whole.