Supporting climate-friendly farming and resilient landscapes
Cumbria’s landscapes play a vital role in tackling climate change. Farming and land management can reduce greenhouse gas emissions while increasing the amount of carbon stored in soils, woodlands, peatlands and other natural habitats. Together, these actions are essential to achieving a net zero Cumbria by 2037.
Cumbria’s farming heritage, extensive uplands and rich natural environment create a unique opportunity to balance food production, nature recovery and carbon storage.
The Farming and other Land Use Sector Group has been formed to create and steer Emissions Reduction Action Plans with the goal of achieving a carbon net zero Cumbria by 2037.
Farming and land use activities contribute significantly to Cumbria’s greenhouse gas emissions, while also providing some of the county’s most important natural carbon sinks. Emissions come from livestock, fertilisers, farm energy use and degrading peatlands, while woodlands, wetlands and soils can help remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Cumbria faces several competing pressures on land, including:
Climate change is already affecting farming businesses through increasingly frequent extreme weather events, including flooding, drought and changing seasonal conditions.
Responding to emissions from farming and land use can:
Farming and other land use contributed a net figure of around 2 MtCO2e (18%) of Cumbria’s total greenhouse gas emissions in 2019.
Our ‘scope’ covers emissions from land use, land use change and forestry, as well as agricultural emissions and the energy used in agricultural buildings/processes.
This area includes all emissions from soil and grass management.
All emissions associated with farm supply chains.
This area of scope examines the emissions of forestry activities including agroforestry.
Promoting the natural sequestration potential. Including the planting and management of woodlands.
Including peatland restoration.
Including wetlands, nature conservation and emissions from land use supply chains.
Moving towards net zero requires changes in how products are designed, purchased, used and managed at the end of their life. The sector group’s suggested approach to tackling these emissions has been split across four strategic priorities, which you can explore below.
scale up
Peatland
Woodland
Enable
Looking for more detail?
You can see the full list of recommendations the Sector Group have put forward for businesses, local authorities, communities and individuals to help achieve each of these priorities in the Farming and other Land Use ERSAP below. See where you might be able to help!
The Emissions Reduction and Sequestration Pathway document sets out the strategic direction to reduce carbon emissions.
The Emissions Reduction and Sequestration Action Plan (ERSAP) document sets out detailed proposed actions for emissions reduction.
Farming and other Land Use
Success stories from across Cumbria showing how steps are being taken to reduce carbon emissions and increase sequestration from land use and agriculture.
The sector group brings together farmers, environmental organisations, land managers, public bodies and industry representatives to help shape Cumbria’s response to climate change.
The group works collaboratively to develop and monitor actions that support low carbon, nature-friendly land management while maintaining a thriving rural economy.
Address key barriers, strengthen the peatland evidence base, and raise awareness of the Cumbria Peat Partnership to expand restoration opportunities.
Align delivery mechanisms with agreed carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane reduction targets.
Case studies, carbon audit data, and targeted advice that supports both emissions reduction and business resilience.
Support initiatives such as Landscape Connections and the Farmer Collaboration Fund to improve connectivity, learning, and advice provision.
Sector group members meet frequently throughout the year, usually online. Meeting overviews will be shared below.
Henry Russell spoke to the group about a project taking place in nearby Lancashire, exploring how the ‘10 Years for Agroecology’ model for maximum sustainable food production could work at a local level. This helps improve understanding of the dynamics of self-sustaining food systems. Further funding is being explored to extend this work, and the group is awaiting a follow-up, but the report is available to read.
Microsoft Word – Local-level Agroecology Full Report – Final
A number of members went along to the Britain Talks Farming: How people think and feel about farming webinar by Climate Outreach (you can watch it here Videos & podcasts – Climate Outreach
This was a useful webinar for understanding the views and attitudes of farmers, farming representative organisations, and the general public towards climate and nature in relation to farming. Misconceptions and assumptions about what people know, understand, and think can become real barriers to action, so it was valuable to hear the reality.
James Robinson from the Nature Friendly Farming Network, and a local farmer from Kendal, joined the group to discuss what could be learned from the farmers in the network and from his family’s own experience. This helped us think about how to frame messaging around environmentally sustainable farming practices for Cumbrian farmers who may not yet have explored all the available opportunities and options. James shared some clear messages: it’s not all or nothing, it’s not all about yield, and it is possible to make a living and have a life. You can also read James’s blog.
Ben Goad, Director of Ecoprospects – independent advisers on soil health and nutrient management – joined a discussion with sector members to share insight into why and how people engage with soil testing, how that translates into action, why some farms still do not do it, and what more could be done. This provided useful food for thought on how we can better support farmers to take this forward.
Most recently the group have had presentations from:
Edinburgh University about a new soil health project taking place in the Lake District National Park. The project will model the potential impacts of changes in soil health and hydrological cycles on the long-term sustainability of productive landscapes:
Stakeholder workshops will be held in the summer to develop this project further.
The Lake District National Park Authority also shared a review of Farming in Protected Landscapes (FIPL) farm carbon audits. Members gave a useful insight into what can be learned from FIPL-funded carbon audits and how future audits might make the most of the data collected. A high-level summary covered both the limitations of the data and emissions across different livestock farming enterprises. The key question for the group is what a future FIPL approach should look like – what, why, and how.
Cumbria Peat Partnership – Cumbrias Peatland Restoration: Peatland restoration is a key strategic priority in the emission reduction action plan, and we asked the Cumbria Peat Partnership whether there was anything we could do to help them scale up activity while ZCC resource remains available through to March 2027. They identified three key areas, which are reflected in the following priorities.
Priorities:
1 – Peatlands – The Cumbria Peat Partnership, led by Cumbria Wildlife Trust, coordinates peatland restoration in Cumbria. It has identified three areas where the sector group and its wider network could support this work over the next 10 months in order to scale up restoration activity:
2 – Emissions and actions for agricultural emissions – Once targets for carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane have been adopted, refine the actions associated with these targets and identify delivery mechanisms where none currently exist.
3 – Encourage more farmers to improve soil health – Understanding the potential of our soils is key to supporting both emission reduction and sequestration across the three strategic priorities. Develop strong case-study examples to support this, such as James’s blog, the Carbon Calling project, and relevant FIPL stories where these also support business growth. Link this to farm carbon-audit data work and related actions so that future audits can be better targeted and information can be gathered on recommendations and interventions that have been carried out.
4 – Explore and capitalise on funding that supports improved farmer connectivity, learning, and engagement. This includes supporting the LDNPA bid to Landscape Connections for up to £8 million over 10 years for an advice and support programme for farmers, as well as the imminent Farmer Collaboration Fund.
Invited speakers Bethany Berry-Henshaw and Tasha Pearson from West Cumbria Rivers Trusts have talk about two of the Cumbrian farm clusters the trust are involved with. This opened up a wider discussion around all of the current opportunities to engage with farmers and landowners and how this group and others, can maximise existing routes to support farmers around the regenerative farming and nature based schemes.
The group have reflected on the comments from the Summit held in early March, and have been working on amendments to the asks to Government and the recommendations from the SOB to bring more clarity around what the barrier is that is needing overcome. The group are also looking at building on the work in the Emission reduction pathway to develop a farming and other land use sector profile to sit along side the asks of Government to outline why some of the asks are specifically (more) challenging to Cumbria. You can find a report from the sector group workshops at the summit here.
Abie Teward from National Union of Farmers (NFU) gave update on the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) and the challenges this is posing for farmers.
Adrian Shepherd from Yorkshire Dales National Park and Tim Duckmanton from Lake District National Park gave updates on National Park Authority partnership plans, and more specifically the climate and nature priorities, and how they align with the ERAPs.
Group starting to think about offer from Cumbria Education Development Centre (CDEC) about involvement of young people in sector group plan communication, including “public proofing” elements of the actions plans/asks, meeting with a Sector Group representative to talk about emission reduction and the sector plans or having a young person join the group if logistically possible and the Sector Group being involved in young people running events in schools around farming and other land use.
Group starting to think about the recommendations from the Cumbria Climate Assembly and how the group could take them on board.
Update from Dmitry Yumashev on the work of Small World Consulting (SWC) including on soils.
Pilot project in National Forest looking at a system for multifunctional landscapes.
Reviewing literature on UK carbon soil emissions for South Downs National Park with biodiversity net gain transitions.
The latest meeting was a busy one and included:
If you feel you’d have something to contribute to a sector group meeting, get in touch to request an invite.
The Zero Carbon Cumbria Partnership is driving change through the work of its four Sector Groups, which focus on the main sources of emissions in Cumbria.
To get involved and find out more about the Partnership, please contact Partnership Manager, Michael Robinson.
