Dr. James Moran:

Rather than focusing on biogenic methane, the important thing is overall net emissions for the farm's unit area. With our systems, if farmers are invested and rewarded, with part of their payment being linked to the protection of nature, water quality and biodiversity, they will match their stocking rates to the production of these services. If they maximise their environmental payments under this system, then they will be farming closer to the capacity of the land. As a result, they will come closer to a neutral greenhouse gas balance overall. They will be more invested in space for nature and management of land to ensure that there is no risk to water. With regard to improving the number of habitats that we have woodlands for, for which we have scoring cards too, if farmers want to invest in more woodlands, trees or better hedgerows on their farms, that will improve the overall greenhouse gas balance. They will not be pushed as much to increase the numbers which correlate with the biogenic methane. Rather than having a tunnel-vision focus on methane, we need to concentrate the overall greenhouse gas balance coming from a unit area of the farm. If the farm concentrates not just on food production, but also the production of nature, high-quality water and carbon sequestration, by definition, we will have to move towards carbon neutral agricultural systems. We are not actually putting a cap on them. Farmers are incentivised and make logical, rational business decisions to move towards this system.