Farm carbon footprint calculator

Where the farm's emissions come from and where to cut first.

Carbon balance by activity, with the default factors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), at Tier 1. Always in metric units.

Enter the fuel and the fertilizer inside the activity that used them (the crop tractor’s diesel under crops, the cattle truck’s under livestock). That keeps each product’s intensity from mixing in the others.

Carbon balance for the year

Enter one of the activities (livestock, crops or forest) to see your result here.

Area and output are only the divisors. To see a result, enter head, nitrogen, fuel, or a planted-forest area.

How to read this numberTier 1 estimate with IPCC default factors. It gives an order of magnitude and shows where to act; it does not replace a measured inventory or a certification. It counts the methane from digestion and manure, the nitrous oxide the herd leaves on pasture and the one from nitrogen fertilizer, and the carbon dioxide from fuel. For swine it counts only the methane, because the pasture factor applies to grazing animals. Left out are the indirect share of the nitrogen, the carbon dioxide from urea, and everything that happens beyond the gate.

Take the full report

The step-by-step calculation with your own numbers, the balance by activity, the forest method with its range and caveats, and the sources, in a report designed to keep and print. Leave your email and download it now.

ArticleUnderstand where the farm’s carbon comes fromHow each activity enters the sum, why enteric methane dominates on pasture cattle, and how the forest becomes a removal. With a real example and sources.Read the full article

Carbon balance report

Your inputs

Your balance

The net is what the farm emitted minus what the forest removed. Negative is a sink; positive is a net emitter.

Calculation trail

What this balance is

It is the sum of the farm’s greenhouse-gas emissions for the year, minus the carbon a growing forest removes, all in carbon dioxide equivalent. Each activity closes its own footprint by the IPCC Tier 1 method, multiplying what the farm already counts by a default factor. Each activity’s emission per hectare and per unit of product is the comparable number; the net situates the whole farm.

Understand the method in full

The full article shows how each activity enters, why enteric methane dominates on pasture cattle, and what the forest removal means.

Read the full article

How to read this number

Tier 1 estimate with IPCC default factors. It gives an order of magnitude and shows where to act; it does not replace a measured inventory or a certification. It counts the methane from digestion and manure, the nitrous oxide the herd leaves on pasture and the one from nitrogen fertilizer, and the carbon dioxide from fuel. For swine it counts only the methane, because the pasture factor applies to grazing animals. Left out are the indirect share of the nitrogen, the carbon dioxide from urea, and everything that happens beyond the gate.

The forest removal is gross and is not permanent storage: harvest returns the carbon. It counts only biomass (stem and root); soil carbon is left out. The value is an average with a wide range.

The sources

Enter what the farm runs in livestock, nitrogen fertilizer and fuel, activity by activity, and the tool applies the IPCC default factors to estimate the year’s emissions in CO₂ equivalent, how much a planted forest removes, and the net between the two, plus each activity’s intensity per hectare and per unit of product.

Take a mixed farm of 400 beef cattle on 600 hectares of pasture, a crop on 400 hectares that gets 5,000 kilograms of nitrogen, and 5 hectares of eucalyptus: the tool applies the default factors activity by activity to estimate the year’s emissions, what the planted forest removes, and the net between them.

The factors are the IPCC 2006 defaults for livestock, soils and forest land, the tier a national inventory starts from, so the number is an estimate the farm can defend and refine, not a measurement. For cattle on pasture one source dwarfs the rest, the enteric methane the animals give off as they digest.