FCo Rural Estates Newsletter Spring 2022 - Flipbook - Page 13
Tenants may need to explore some of these areas too. Essentially, the question is whether
it is within your exclusive control to deliver on the commitments of a scheme.
Commitments and consequences
The details of scheme commitments may vary widely, from woodland and hedgerow
enhancement, to those with a focus on the soil (crop rotations, cover crops, injection
drilling) or greenhouse gas reduction (fertiliser and fuel types). However, there are certain
common aspects.
Duration
Schemes will have defined durations. For some this may be short, but others designed to
secure long-term carbon capture may entail a commitment over decades. You may need
to consider how this fits in with your future plans for retirement or the sale of the land.
Giving over land with strategic potential to an environmental use now might also have
consequences for the likelihood of its development in the longer term.
Additionality
Signing up to a scheme will usually involve demonstrating that you are not already under
an existing legal obligation to provide the environmentally beneficial outcomes, whether
that is an obligation to a landlord, a planning authority or other state body, or under
another environmental scheme. As mentioned in our Woodland – conditional exemption
and environmental schemes article, this means entering into one scheme may inhibit
your ability to benefit from others.
Leakage
Scheme providers will want to know that the adoption of environmentally beneficial
commitments at one site will not result in an intensification of land use (and thus
increased greenhouse gas emissions or reduced carbon capture) on land elsewhere. You
cannot just move a high input / high yield operation down the road.
There are, therefore, likely to be implications to entering into carbon credit and
biodiversity schemes, which may not be limited to a change to day-to-day farming
practices. The decision to join a scheme needs to fit into the wider strategy of an estate
over the long term and should not be taken in hand unadvisedly or lightly.
“
Scheme providers will want to know that the
adoption of environmentally beneficial commitments
at one site will not result in an intensification of land
use (and thus increased greenhouse gas emissions or
reduced carbon capture) on land elsewhere.
Rural Estates Newsletter
Spring 2022
13