Recent success with Innovate UK funding is enabling ADAS to develop functionalities for the YEN Family and to initiate a new network focussing on reducing the carbon costs of cropping, called YEN-Zero.
The agriculture industry has made a commitment to reaching Net-Zero carbon emissions by 2040. This will require substantial reductions in the greenhouse gas intensities of crop products, as well as increased storage of carbon in the farm system. Crucially, this needs people to come together to understand the issues, adopt common metrics and share ideas and experiences to find ‘what works’.
With support from The Morley Agricultural Foundation (TMAF), ADAS has calculated the GHG intensities of cereal crops entered into the Yield Enhancement Network since 2013. This demonstrates the wide variation in crop GHG costs on-farm, highlighting the importance of emissions related to N fertiliser, and that high yielding crops often have the lowest GHG intensities.
New Innovate UK projects allow us to develop ‘Dynamic Benchmarking’ for the YEN Family, so that YEN members can compare their crops to their peers, selecting by location or soil type or other factors. We aim to use this to enable the benchmarking of crop GHG intensities, which can form the basis of YEN-Zero, bringing together a network of organisations and individuals interested in calculating, comparing, understanding and improving their carbon footprints.
Agritech Express webinar about YEN-Zero
Daniel Kindred will be discussing the issues around YEN-Zero in the first Agritech Express webinar hosted by Agri-techE at 10.30 on Friday 15th January. This will include exploration of the relationships between GHG emissions, crop inputs and crop yields from the TMAF study. You can register for the webinar here - https://www.agri-tech-e.co.uk/event/agri-tech-express-with-adas-yen-benchmarking-and-analytics/
Go to our YEN-Zero webpage to find out more and sign up if you’d like to be part of the journey.