Opinion: What can land-based carbon removal offer farmers?

Farm businesses own or host about 70% of the UK's total solar generation capacity, whether on the rooftops of agricultural buildings or in solar farms. Many also host wind power, and may soon see new opportunities for on-farm single turbines, as promised in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero's (DESNZ's) July 2025 Onshore Wind Taskforce Strategy.

Those businesses also invest in various forms of bioenergy, from wood and straw fuel to anaerobic digestion. In addition to producing renewable energy, the agricultural sector is uniquely placed to help the net zero economy, as it is both an emissions source and a sink.

Agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are harder to abate than many other sources across the economy due to the complex biological processes involved in food production. Alongside the aviation sector, which also has limited alternatives for delivering its present service, agriculture and the land-based sector is expected by many authorities, such as the Climate Change Committee, to be still producing significant residual emissions by the net zero target year of 2050.

These unavoidable agricultural emissions need to be counterbalanced by market- and policy-based mechanisms to drive GHG removals – potentially a new source of income and support for the rural sector.

The UK is widely expected, by the government, its advisers and independent authorities, to need between about 70 and 100m tonnes per year of carbon dioxide removals to set against its residual emissions from all sources. In its recommended Seventh Carbon Budget for 2038–2042, the Climate Change Committee advises that agricultural emissions should have decreased by that time by about one-third, with the remainder largely cancelled out by land-based carbon removals.

Commonly called carbon removal, carbon dioxide removal or GHG removal, this process involves capturing atmospheric carbon dioxide – generally, but not always, through photosynthetic plant growth – and then maintaining the stored carbon in a long-term stable form, for decades to centuries.

Nature-based GHG removals include the management of enlarged hedgerows, increased tree planting and measures to boost soil organic matter – and may often be associated with environmental co-benefits such as enhanced biodiversity, soil health and climate resilience – although questions remain over how best to account for limitations to their additionality and permanence. Farmers must prove whether a measurable change has occurred compared with business as usual, and whether the capture of carbon is sufficiently long term or may be reversed.

Engineered GHG removals from the land include a number of types of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), carbon captured in long-lived bio-based material such as timber products, biocomposites, and so on, and novel inorganic carbon-storing soil amendments such as biochar and enhanced rock weathering – where rock dust is spread on land – which is being researched in Sheffield.

According to researchers at the CO₂RE Greenhouse Gas Removal Hub, both in the UK and globally, to date most net carbon dioxide removal has been in the form of forest and woodland growth, with only a modest contribution from innovative methods. 

However, the latter are predicted by the CO₂RE experts to become much more significant, and likely to surpass tree growth in magnitude and longevity. Nevertheless, case studies are few and far between, mostly in the form of research activities such as the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Greenhouse Gas Removal Demonstrator programme.

Many in the agricultural sector would strongly prefer a future increase in multi-functional land use, such as delivering GHG removals or displacing GHG emissions at the same time or on the same land used for agricultural production, rather than seeing land withdrawn from agriculture exclusively for carbon storage.

There is still time to implement new actions under the Sustainable Farming Initiative (SFI) to specifically target net zero, encouraging farmers to scrutinise their systems to find the most climate-friendly methods of producing food and maintaining or increasing vital carbon sinks.

Significant opportunities exist for British farmers and landowners to provide the input materials – feedstocks such as annual and perennial fibre crops – for post-combustion BECCS, as well as arable break crops and agricultural residues for anaerobic digestion with capture of biogenic carbon dioxide (AD-BECCS).

Farmers are likely to benefit from improved access to diverse non-food markets for such bioenergy feedstocks alongside food production, since this may enable more profitable use of otherwise relatively unproductive land, as well as adding value through longer and more varied crop rotations.

However, better communication of the case for GHG removals by by government, media and industry stakeholders is required to ensure greater public understanding and acceptance. It is important that emissions reductions and GHG removals are seen as complementary, not competing actions.

The UK has some of the most forward-thinking, productive and innovative landowners and farmers working across the sector, who can play a central role in government's net zero ambitions. But it is crucial that the government continues to support both land-based renewable energy production and carbon storage, so that farmers can continue to produce food while also delivering for the environment.

Last year DESNZ commissioned Dr Alan Whitehead – now Lord Whitehead, a DESNZ minister – to review the status and prospects of a wide range of carbon removal technologies. His report, Independent Review of Greenhouse Gas Removals (GGRs), published in October 2025, recommended support for a diverse mix of GHG removals, including relatively small-scale, land-based options such as AD-BECCS and landspreading of biochar.

Back at the Low Carbon Agriculture event, panellists from the Forestry Commission, Rothamsted research and ADAS consultants discussed a number of high-level questions, around nature and soil-based carbon removals.

• There was agreement with one of the conclusions of Lord Whitehead's review that a broad portfolio approach to GHG removal, including smaller dispersed projects, is preferable to over-reliance on large-scale carbon capture projects.
• Likewise, panellists agreed that carbon removals could be held back by a poorly-developed regulatory framework, such as the need for environmental permitting when adding significant amounts of biochar or rock dust to agricultural soils.
• The group also called for DEFRA policy, such as the revamped Environmental Land Management scheme, to support nature-based GHG removal more explicitly in the form of enhanced management of hedgerows, woodlands, agroforestry and peatland, with stronger cross-government links to DESNZ as the lead department on this topic.

The technical potential of new opportunities in carbon removal is positive, but government departments and agencies can do much more to kickstart the market. An official response by the government to Lord Whitehead's review is eagerly awaited, to be published by mid-2026 alongside the government response to the Seventh Carbon Budget.