Thematic Group on Carbon Farming

The land use sectors (both agriculture and forestry) have an important role to play in meeting the EU’s target of achieving net zero emissions by 2050 and the 55% reductions required by 2030, as set out in the EU Climate Law. An EU target for net removals of 310 Mt CO2eq by 2030 is also proposed, with ambitious targets set for each Member State. As foreseen in the EU Green Deal, the European Commission adopted a Communication on Sustainable Carbon Cycles in December 2021, in which it promotes the upscaling of carbon farming as a green business model and sets out a series of short to medium-term actions to address current challenges to achieve this.

The CAP Strategic Plans will be a key vehicle to promote improved land management practices that reduce GHG emissions, increase carbon sequestration and provide incentives for land managers, farmers and foresters to increase carbon removals and protect carbon stocks.

In this context, the Thematic Group (TG) on Carbon Farming ran from March to June 2022.

Note: The TG was organised by the European Network for Rural Development (ENRD) before the official launch of the EU CAP Network on 6 October 2022.

Objectives

The TG explored how greater action on carbon farming can be encouraged via the CAP and the economic opportunities that this can bring, including collecting good practices, insights and examples from the current CAP and other programmes, such as LIFE, Interreg, Horizon 2020 and the Structural Funds.

Activities

The first TG meeting (24/03/2022) focused on sharing examples of European good practices and promising initiatives on carbon farming, discussing how these can be upscaled using the CAP, and what the key enablers and barriers are to doing this.

The second TG meeting (09/06/2022) built on the TG activities, including previous group discussions and contributions shared by group members, to look at different ways that initiatives monitor and measure carbon sequestration, focusing on the conditions needed to enable the upscaling of carbon farming across the EU and come up with recommendations on how this might be achieved.

Informal online exchanges took place between the two formal TG meetings and allowed for further discussion among the TG members and the exchange of experiences and good practices.

The TG produced a series of outputs that are presented in the Related Publications section further down on this page.

Key findings

The TG work fed into a final Factsheet that explores the challenges and opportunities involved with upscaling carbon farming in the EU, and presents key factors to increase farmers’ motivation to engage with carbon farming and enhance actors’ knowledge about which carbon farming practices would be most adequate for them. The document also outlines policy challenges associated with taking action in these areas, as identified by the TG members.

Enabling conditions to overcome challenges and enhance opportunities for carbon farming include raising awareness and building capacity amongst land managers, advisers, stakeholders, and Managing Authorities, and financial incentives to encourage land manager engagement in carbon farming.

Top priorities for upscaling carbon farming throughout the EU – according to TG members – include: