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The dairy industry is receiving considerable attention in relation to both its significant greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and its potential for reducing those emissions, contributing towards meeting national targets and driving the industry towards sustainable intensification. However, the extent to which improvements can be made is dependent on the decision-making processes of individual producers, so there has been a proliferation of carbon accounting tools seeking to influence those processes. This paper evaluates the suitability of such tools for driving environmental change by influencing on-farm management decisions. Seven tools suitable for the European dairy industry were identified, their characteristics evaluated, and used to process data relating to six scenario farms, emulating processes undertaken in real farm management situations. As a result of the range of approaches taken by the tools, there was limited agreement between them as to GHG emissions magnitude, and no consistent pattern as to which tools resulted in the highest/lowest results. Despite this it is argued, that as there was agreement as to the farm activities responsible for the greatest emissions, the more complex tools were still capable of performing a ‘decision support’ role, and guiding management decisions, whilst others could merely focus attention on key issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The agricultural sector contributes 9% towards total UK greenhouse gas emissions and so may offer significant potential as a sector to help meet national and international emission reduction targets. In order to help farmers manage their emissions and to encourage more sustainable farming, several carbon accounting tools are now available. This article describes a short study that selected five suitable tools and compared their performance on nine European arable farms, concentrating on the crop production components, to determine how useful they are for assisting in the development of site-specific mitigation strategies and how well they would perform within farm assurance or benchmarking schemes. The results were mixed, with some tools better designed for identifying mitigation opportunities than others. The results also showed that, quantitatively, the results are highly variable between tools and depended on the selected functional unit, this being highly important if the wider aspects of sustainability such as food security are to be considered. However, there is statistical consistency across the tools regarding the ranking order of the farms in terms of their emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]