Why current farm carbon audits risk getting the wrong answers
Farm carbon audits are increasingly shaping advice, funding decisions and policy direction in Scotland. The intention is positive: agriculture must play its part in tackling climate change. But there’s a growing problem — many of the carbon audits currently in use are incomplete, unbalanced, and risk driving the wrong decisions on farms.
The RegenFarm Network Policy Group's latest position paper sets out why.
Farming isn’t just about emissions — it’s about cycles
Unlike most industries, agriculture both emits carbon and removes it from the atmosphere as part of everyday production. Plants capture CO₂ through photosynthesis. In pasture-based livestock systems, that carbon flows through grass, animals, soils and soil biology in tightly linked cycles.
Well-managed grazing systems can support soil health, biodiversity, water regulation and long-term resilience — all while producing food. Yet most farm carbon audits focus heavily on emissions (especially methane from livestock) while largely ignoring carbon drawdown, cycling and soil processes.
That creates a skewed balance sheet.
Partial information leads to poor decisions
Methane matters, and it must be addressed. But decisions based only on emissions figures — without accounting for pasture growth, soil function and whole-farm context — risk doing more harm than good.
Across Scotland, RegenFarm Network members are already seeing perverse outcomes from carbon audit–led advice, including:
- Regenerative grazing practices being penalised the longer they are in place
- Species-rich hay meadows being recommended for ploughing and reseeding
- Farms already using adaptive grazing being advised to “adopt” it, revealing a lack of system understanding
These examples highlight a fundamental mismatch between audit assumptions and how regenerative, pasture-based farms actually function.
Efficiency metrics can miss the bigger picture
Policy emphasis on emissions per kilogram of output can also push farms towards short-term intensification: higher stocking rates, tighter production cycles, increased inputs, and the loss of marginal habitats.
But the climate doesn’t respond to efficiency metrics — it responds to the total balance of emissions and removals across landscapes. Focusing narrowly on output risks undermining soil health, biodiversity, animal welfare and long-term resilience.
A better way forward
- The RegenFarm Network is not calling for carbon audits to be abandoned. Instead, we argue they must improve — quickly — and be guided by clear principles:
- Account for the whole carbon cycle, not just emissions
- Recognise different farming systems, especially pasture-based and regenerative ones
- Focus on total farm and landscape impacts, not narrow efficiency metrics
- Embed carbon within wider ecological context
- Support farmer learning, not prescriptive or punitive decision-making
Until carbon audits can reflect the real complexity of biological systems, they should not be used as the primary basis for policy conditionality or farm-level prescriptions.
If Scotland is serious about climate, biodiversity and resilient food systems, we need better tools — not just more numbers.