On the 2nd of May 2024, ARC Zero’s Vice Chair, Patrick Casement and fellow ARC Zero farm members, Hilary and Roger Bell, jointly, had the privilege of hosting the Chairman of the UK’s Climate Change Committee, Professor Piers Forster, and the President of the Ulster Farmers Union, William Irvine, on Hilary and Roger Bell’s farm.
Hilary and Roger’s farm is a sheep and beef farm near Kells Co. Antrim whose greenhouse gas footprint has been calculated and benchmarked against their peers to be 28% better than the average.
Patrick Casement took the opportunity to introduce the ARC Zero project to Professor Piers Forster, explaining that the project was jointly funded by the Department of Agriculture Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) and the EU’s EIP-Agri programme and consists of seven farms, of different farming enterprises across five different counties of Northern Ireland.
Professor Piers Forster was particularly impressed with the detailed and granular measurement on the Bell’s farm, not just of its greenhouse gas emissions but also of its carbon stocks, using both aerial LiDAR surveys at 40 scans per square metre and the measurement of soil organic carbon right down to the soil C horizon, or one metre of depth.
Patrick was able to show, where carbon sequestration was included in the Bell’s greenhouse carbon footprint, their farm business’s net carbon emissions was 56% lower that their gross emissions.
Professor Piers Forster recognised that the ARC Zero project had gone further than most other farms in the United kingdom on their journey towards Net Zero and commended ARC Zero on their work.
On behalf of ARC Zero, Vice Chair, Patrick Casement would like to thank the Climate Change Committee’s chairman, Ulster Farmers Union President for visiting an ARC Zero farm; and he would like to thank fellow ARC Zero farmers, Hilary and Roger Bell
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