Reducing emissions: what happens beyond the farm gate
Are you a financial institution catering to the agricultural industry? Are you looking for innovative ways to support sustainable agriculture and maximise your business potential?
At Agrecalc, we understand the pain points you face in lending, insurance, mortgages, and other financial products specific to agriculture, especially in the light of today’s regulatory obligations, commitments and pledges by governments and the international community.
Those pledges revolve around emissions reduction plans across the value chain, including agriculture.
With net-zero targets set across the board and the big push coming from the consumers for the producers to be more environmentally conscious and environmentally friendly, the waves are felt across the financial community as well. The investors simply want to invest in greener companies and businesses.
How can Agrecalc help with calculating emissions
Agrecalc is a Life-Cycle Analysis tool: that means it calculates emissions associated with the product from cradle to gate – from the birth of the product on the farm, all the way to its retailers. In the long run, it can help measure the impact of investments on agriculture.
Agrecalc is a precise instrument that offers both breadth and depth of on-farm data, enabling users to identify hotspots and management practices that can deliver the biggest emission reductions. The software is regularly updated with the latest scientific research to ensure it provides accurate and up-to-date emissions factors. In addition, the team behind Agrecalc are always on hand to offer expert support and advice.
As such, Agrecalc Software-as-a-Service is a valuable tool for financial institutions that are working on finding new ways to incorporate carbon footprint calculations into financial products and services, and thus usher new options available to customers.
We have recently supported Oxbury – The Agricultural Bank, and are featured in Oxbury Bank Plc 2023 Natural Napital Report.
Understanding emissions scopes
Organisations are increasingly measuring and monitoring reductions in GHG emissions as part of their road to net zero.
The IPCC Greenhouse Gas Protocol defines three scopes of emissions reductions to help focus net zero efforts.
Scope 1 GHG emissions are those from sources owned or controlled by the reporting entity and can include soil N2O from fertilisers and vehicles. Scope 2 GHG emissions are indirect, associated with the production of electricity, heat, or
steam purchased by the reporting entity.
Scope 3 encompasses all other indirect emissions – emissions that are beyond an organisation’s direct control but are emissions that the organisation is indirectly responsible for across its value or supply chain e.g. purchased goods such as milk bought from a farm by a cheese making company.
Mandatory reporting of Scope 3 emissions, along with Scope 1 and 2, is now required by The International Sustainability
Standards Board (ISSB). Many organisations around the world are using the ISSB standard to report and demonstrate their
commitments towards net zero to investors, customers and governments.
Scope 3 emissions from field-level agricultural production and land-use change account for more than 80% of all GHG
emissions from the global food supply chain and there is growing pressure to reduce GHG emissions from agriculture to
meet beyond-farm gate demands and commitments to meet net zero.
Reduced GHG emissions associated with soils, e.g. by altering manufactured fertiliser use, can be calculated and reported via Agrecalc.
