The Ulster Farmers Union is pushing back on plans to make carbon auditing a condition of the Farm Sustainability Payment in Northern Ireland. It wants the requirement dropped and replaced with a voluntary, properly funded system that farmers can use to find real efficiency gains without losing access to support payments. The union says current carbon footprint calculators miss the carbon stored in soil, hedges, and peatland, and that methane from livestock needs to be treated differently from fossil fuel emissions. It also argues the audit scheme should be paid from Just Transition funding, not from the Sustainable Agriculture Programme budget, so money meant for farm support is not diverted. The AERA committee is running a four-week review, and a formal consultation is expected soon. Farmers and other stakeholders will have a chance to submit views before any regulation is finalized.
