Teagasc profiles the Jones family farm in Co. Cork, where 22ha of forestry sits alongside a 100-cow dairy herd. The Sitka spruce crop sequestered around 30 tonnes of CO2e per hectare in 2025, with an average of 16 tonnes per hectare per year over the rotation. That is a concrete example of how farmland can store carbon while also producing timber income. The farm's total emissions were 550 tonnes of CO2e in 2025, or 8 tonnes per hectare. The article also notes that there is currently no mechanism for farmers to be paid for this sequestration. Ireland's Carbon Farming Framework is still waiting on EU methodologies by the end of 2026 and an EU-wide registry from 2028. For anyone tracking carbon farming policy or looking for real farm-level data, this case study is worth reading. It shows both the sequestration potential and the gap between storing carbon and earning from it.
