Let sheep farmers grow trees and sell carbon offsets to businesses, urge researchers

Sheep farmers' land will be more profitable as forest sold for carbon offsetting, than if used for wool or meat, a new study has said. Most sheep farms are unprofitable without subsidies, with farmers losing an estimated £4,400 to £6,000 per hectare in a 25 year period when labour costs are considered. That is currently topped up with payments from the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which pays farmers based on the size of their land but will be phased out after Brexit. Researchers at the University of Sheffield have found that farmers could make a profit if they left their land to allow native trees to return and then sell carbon offsets to businesses and individuals. The Government’s advisers on climate change have called for tree cover in the UK to increase from 13 per cent to 17 per cent to help sequester carbon emissions, and have suggested the least productive farmland could be used. The study estimates profits of £34 to £560 per hectare over 25 years, based on the current carbon price of £15 per ton of CO2. That is a conservative estimate of the potential profit as it does not take into account extra subsidies from the incoming replacement to the CAP, which will pay farmers for environmental goods. It also doesn’t include existing subsidies for tree planting, which pay 80 per cent of the upfront costs of new trees in England, or potential profits from the sale of timber products. The authors of the study point out that the UK and other Western countries currently outsource most of their carbon offsetting to reforestation in developing countries. Professor Colin Osborne, professor of plant biology at the University of Sheffield and lead author of the study, said: “Using public money to actively prevent reforestation in the UK and Europe is morally questionable given the pressure Western governments place on the global south to end tropical deforestation.” Mr Osborne said the findings weren’t intended to suggest that sheep farming should be abandoned, but they could inform decision making about where subsidies should be targeted and where reforestation occurs. “Sheep farmers are sheep farmers and it’s all about identity, tradition and culture and what we want the countryside to look like. But it’s a conversation we should be having,” he said. “Tree planting is going to happen and it’s a question of where we want these trees.”