Mid Canterbury arable farmers unsure about how to calculate their greenhouse gas emissions “number” are urged to attend a workshop being held by the Foundation for Arable Research.
Farmers have a choice of attending the workshop in Timaru on September 7, Ashburton on September 12 or Leeston on September 15.
All farmers are expected to know their GHG emissions number by the end of this year, with more than 60 per cent of arable farmers in FAR’s 2021 survey yet to do so. Farmers must have a written plan on how to mitigate their GHG emissions by January 2025.
Numbers will be generated using E-Check, a simple and straightforward online calculator, purpose-built by FAR researcher, Dirk Wallace, for arable farmers.
As well as developing E-Check, FAR environment team members Turi McFarlane, Dirk Wallace and Diana Mathers have been gathering data on arable farms’ GHG emissions.
McFarlane said many farmers were unsure about what calculator to use and how their “number” compares with others.
A pilot study involving 26 mixed arable farms in Canterbury, Manawatu, Southland and Otago using the Overseer emissions calculator, showed total farm emissions ranged from 2024 to 6139kg CO2e/ha (carbon dioxide equivalent per hectare).
This was made up of 41 per cent methane, 26 per cent carbon dioxide, and 33 per cent nitrous oxide.
Livestock is often a major driver of GHG emissions, with 93 per cent of arable farms indicating they run a mixed cropping and livestock operation in the FAR 2021 survey.
Turi said a number of agricultural-based GHG emissions calculators have been approved by He Waka Eke Noa to help growers meet this year’s target, but it’s important to appreciate there are some key differences between calculators.
E-Check has been designed entirely with the arable industry in mind and is aligned to biological emissions considered by HWEN.
Overseer has some differences, such as including a broader range of CO2 emissions (eg. those associated with fuel use, fertiliser manufacture etc).
“E-Check is simple, and for most farmers it will take less than 20 minutes to calculate, depending on the level of detail farmers want to include.”
E-Check is a spreadsheet based GHG calculator that farmers can use to input easy to access information on farm size, fertiliser applied and livestock moving on and off farm, to calculate a farm’s GHG number.
The workshops will be run by FAR’s Growers Leading Change facilitators.
Participants are expected to bring their own laptop.

• By Pat Deavoll