The low-carbon objective

There is increasing interest in climate change, reducing food miles and, perhaps more importantly, reducing the carbon footprints of farm products. But complete life-cycle analyses of embedded carbon are very complex and before looking at the energy used in manufacturing tractors, fertilisers, pesticides, and so on, there is a need to first quantify the direct energy used by farmers and growers. This has been the subject of a recent Defra-funded study led by Warwick HRI and carried out in collaboration with FEC Services. Steve Adams and Allen Langton, of Warwick HRI, and Chris Plackett, FEC Services, talk us through the process in the fourth article in Warwick HRI’s climate change series for FPJ.