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Abstract

ABP’s PRISM 2030 programme aims to work with a selected group of farmer suppliers over the next 2-3 years to explore how to make a step-change in sustainability within the UK beef and lamb sectors. At ABP, 90% of the footprint of meat and dairy resides at farm level, therefore there is significant interest in both quantifying ABP’s on-farm (scope III) emissions and working with farmers to implement best management practices to reduce both emissions and other environmental metrics (e.g. biodiversity, soil health) over time. The PRISM programme will involve 350 farmers from the ABP supply chain establishing the carbon footprint of their beef and/or sheep operation via SRUC’s Agrecalc carbon footprint tool. The consulting firm Andersons will execute the Agrecalc analysis and provide a report focusing on the short-term “win-win” solutions. ,Researchers at HAU will then produce bespoke reports for each farm, detailing the opportunities for reducing GHGe on the medium to long-term basis, particularly those relating to key performance indicators (KPI) and beef and sheep performance. The resulting dataset will be analysed by HAU researchers to identify the KPI, tools, mangement practices and systems that can be leveraged to both reduce GHGe and improve wider facets of sustainability. 

Description

Researchers at HAU will interrogate and analyse the data in order to:
1)    Identify, on a farm-by-farm basis, the opportunities for that operation to reduce GHG emissions and produce a bespoke report that will show, backed with evidence from pee-reviewed literature, some of the practices that could be adopted or metrics that could be improved. These might include, for example, reducing cattle age at slaughter, improving livestock health, utilising supplements that cut enteric methane emissions and meeting ABP specifications for finished animals. 
2)    Identify trends and opportunities on a regional, sector and sub-sector basis, e.g. the mitigation potentials that may be most appropriate to farmers in the South-West of England compared to Northern Ireland; or the opportunities for dairy-cross finishers vs. suckler cattle farmers.
3)    Generate materials and insight that enable peer-to-peer knowledge transfer through orchestrated farmer forums and other forms of educational media (e.g. webinars, leaflets, farm walks, etc) to help farmers understand what mechanisms and approaches would work best on their operation.

More details are available here: /news/206930/professors-expertise-to-guide-15-million-sustainability-programme-for-abp and here: