Emissions made simple
Understand and reduce your farm’s emissions.
How can we help?
There are many factors that contribute to your farm’s emissions, so the more knowledge you have, the easier it will be to lower your footprint.
Lower net footprint milk is attractive to customers and helps maintain the value of all our milk by keeping our Co-op competitive.
WHAT IS A FOOTPRINT?
And how is it calculated?
Your farm’s carbon footprint is the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions generated from your farm, minus any carbon removals.
These include:
- On-farm activity emissions – from feed, fertiliser and your herd
- Land-use changes – emissions from deforestation or converting scrub to pasture
- Peat soil emissions – higher emissions occur when peat soils are drained
- Carbon removals – how much carbon is stored by vegetation on your farm
These emissions are then divided by the amount of milk your farm produces. Because the greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint and emissions reduction target for your Co-op is reported in fat and protein corrected milk (FPCM), your individual farm emissions are calculated in the same way; the above calculation, divided across tonnes of FPCM (instead of kgMS).
WHAT IMPACTS YOUR NUMBERS?
Several factors make up your footprint
Here are the main factors that influence your overall emissions.
On-farm activity
Emissions depend on how your farm is operated (with factors like feed and fertiliser use). The more milk produced per cow and per hectare spreads emissions over greater output, lowering the footprint per tonne of product.
Land-use change
If areas of trees or scrub have been deforested and converted to pasture, the carbon impact of that conversion is accounted for over a 20-year period (also known as the responsibility window).
Peat soils
Drained peat soils emit greenhouse gases due to oxidation when the water table is lowered.
Carbon removals
Your vegetation removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, lowering your overall footprint.
HELP TO LOWER EMISSIONS
Helpful support and resources
Lowering your emissions begins with understanding your numbers and identifying opportunities. Here are some good places to start.
CARBON REMOVALS
Carbon removals on-farm
When we’re calculating your farm’s emissions footprint, we can “remove” the annual carbon stored by trees from the emissions created by farming. This lowers your on-farm activity footprint. To make this simple, we have built a new digital tool, which is being tested by farmers now and will be available to all Co-op farmers later in the 2025/26 season.
Carbon emissions tool
The tool will ask you to:
- Review and confirm your farm boundaries.
- Confirm the vegetation we have mapped for your farm is correct.
- Complete a declaration to include your carbon removals in both your farm footprint and the co-op footprint.
After completing this process, you will receive an email with your vegetation map, your carbon removals declaration, and your total carbon removals number (i.e. tonnes CO2). This number will then be used as part of calculating the emissions footprint of your farm at the end of the season.
Making sure we're not double counting - If vegetation is enrolled in the Emissions Trading Scheme or any other carbon scheme this means the removals are already accounted for and we need to exclude from our scheme.
Ensuring trees are permanent planting - When trees are harvested we need to account for a reversal of any carbon claimed, so trees planned for harvest or removal should not be included in the programme.
Right to claim - You need to be the landowner or have the permission of the landowner to claim the carbon removals in your farm footprint.
Annual permission - Your permission will be on an annual basis and can also be specific to certain planted areas on your farm providing you flexibility.
HOW-TO VIDEO
The Emissions Scenario Calculator explained
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Learn more about emissions and what this means on-farm
Your Farm Insights Report summarises your emissions from on-farm activities. You’ll find an indication of your net footprint on the Co-operative Difference dashboard here.
To compare emissions across farms and with global competitors, we use Fat and Protein Corrected Milk (FPCM) which is a standard measure that accounts for milk’s fat and protein levels.
Imported feeds have embedded emissions from production, processing and transport. There can be a lot of variation in emissions from feed, talk to your trusted farm advisor for advice.
Higher milk production per cow spreads emissions over more output, lowering emissions per tonnes of FPCM.
Talk to an advisor through our On-Farm Efficiency Service to review your data and explore further options.
Your footprint is based on your Farm Dairy Records, so accurate record-keeping is essential. If you need help, talk to your Sustainable Dairying Advisor.
Accurate emissions reporting keeps Fonterra competitive and ensures continued access to premium markets. Customers are increasingly rewarding farmers who act on sustainability. That’s one of the reasons we’ve made a strategic choice to be a leader in sustainability.
In the past, calculating carbon removed by growing vegetation at the individual farm level hasn’t been possible at the scale and pace needed. Fortunately that’s changing thanks to new tools that are becoming available.
We are working on a tool to detect vegetation from satellite imagery. This provides us information on the area, predominant species (native, pine, exotic hardwood, exotic softwood, scrub) and approximate age of each planted area. From this, annual increases in carbon storage can be calculated.
New Zealand’s soils generally have high levels of carbon, thanks to our rotational grazing system. This is a good starting point, but it’s crucial to focus on preventing carbon loss from the soil, not just increasing carbon stocks.
Natural events like droughts, floods, and cultivation can cause soil carbon to be lost, and there’s still uncertainty about how to fairly account for these changes. Ongoing research aims to find the best management practices to improve soil carbon and ensure accurate measurement during different conditions.
No, the carbon benefit from removals will not be passed on to customers via credits. Your removals will be used to lower the footprint of your milk.
Currently, the Co-op’s on-farm footprint includes emissions from on-farm activities, historical land use change, and peat soils. Including carbon removals in the net on-farm footprint will help us meet our emissions intensity reduction targets.
We are focusing on trees and other types of woody vegetation as this vegetation has the greatest carbon benefit. Flaxes and smaller shrubs are beneficial for riparian areas and water quality, however, do not store high amounts of carbon due to their size and composition.
Pasture does not store carbon in the long term. Most of the carbon from the pasture is breathed out of the cow as carbon dioxide.
Season to season the amount of pasture is typically consistent on farm, unlike growing trees and woody vegetation where the carbon stocks can increase year on year.
Carbon credits are a type of carbon offset. Carbon offsets and removals are two different ways a company can manage emissions. Offsets use carbon removals that compensate for emissions created elsewhere, – for example, when you book a flight overseas, you can choose to buy ‘carbon credits’ that offset your flight. Because the airline is unlikely to own the land with trees growing on it, it can only manage this with offsets.
On the other hand, carbon removals involve the storage of emissions on the same land where emissions are produced. In our case, the carbon absorbed by growing trees on your farm can help to reduce the footprint of the milk you’ve produced.
Vegetation needs to be at least two metres in height and have a crown area of 20m2 or canopy cover of greater than 30% of the forest floor to be detected by the mapping tools.
If vegetation is part of our carbon removals program and is later removed, we must account for a reversal.
Harvesting included vegetation could result in a liability for your footprint. For this reason, pine is defaulted to ‘non-permanent’. However, when reviewing your vegetation, you’ll have the option to change this if your pine trees are permanent. If vegetation is removed from our scheme or lost through weather events, we may also need to account for reversals. We’ll ask you to refresh your carbon removals declaration annually to ensure our records are up-to-date.
You can claim carbon removals from support land if it is mapped in our system and owned or formally leased by you. Additionally, it needs to be supporting your Fonterra dairy farm by growing crops or forage for dairy stock or grazing dairy dry stock.