Great Green Bedwyn’s joint event, with the Southern Streams Farming Cluster and Farm Carbon Toolkit Ltd, focused on understanding more about greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from farming and the village, including methane, nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide which are very destructive for the climate and ozone layer.
Great Bedwyn households produce 44% more greenhouse gases from our housing and 23% more from our travel compared to England (and Wiltshire) - see graph below. Our housing stock is poor and we use oil to heat old, badly insulated houses; only about 1 in 6 of our houses have good Energy Performance Certificates (EPC) grades (A, B & C), but 60 houses (10%) have bad EPCs grades (F&G).
Bedwyn’s travel emissions are high because we are a rural village and most people still drive internal combustion cars - we have no public EV chargers in the village. For travel and lifestyle choices there is a hierarchy of transport, see graph below or borrow ‘How Bad are Bananas’ by Mike Berners-Lee from a library. We consume a lot more ‘stuff’ than we really need – we could all cope with fewer possessions, sharing more and reducing what we buy.
Becky Willson (Farm Carbon Toolkit) described agricultural emissions which are about 11% of the UK’s greenhouse gases. Farming produces lots of methane (from the mouths of sheep and cattle!) and nitrous oxide but relatively little carbon dioxide compared to residential areas. Methane and nitrous oxide are very ‘potent’ gases, persist in the atmosphere and cause worse global warming than carbon dioxide. Every farm’s emissions are different and depend on soil type, rainfall, amount of soil disturbance and crops. Farmers can measure their baseline emissions and track the impact of the changes they make. The results have been amazingly positive, with farmers reducing emissions, usually saving money in the process. Many of the farming changes support biodiversity, reduce emissions and store more carbon.
George Hosier from Wexcombe Farm & South Streams described his farm’s 10-year journey to retain and improve soil which is vital for farming and can reduce emissions. He and his father recognised the value of minimising soil disturbance in the UK and stopped ploughing their fields in 2012. They imported only the second ‘minimum till’ drill from New Zealand and pioneered its use in the UK. Now, the farm has significantly reduced the use of synthetic fertiliser, relying on mob grazing of cattle which live on the hillside 365 days per year. Herbal leys have replaced deworming drugs for cattle, enabling dung beetles to thrive - vital for soil health. Farm wildlife are increasing, and George is particularly delighted that there are more red-listed lapwings/peewits and linnets on the farm while his profits have increased.
Great Green Bedwyn has identified some possible ‘easy’ actions to help each of us reduce our admissions. Together we can make a bigger difference, often saving money e.g. by car sharing, repairing stuff and buying less, eating good quality local food or even growing your own. Slides available below as pdfs.
Priority areas for Great Bedwyn are reducing emissions from travel, moving away from oil heating for our homes and sharing our ‘stuff’, repairing what we have and buying less.
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