We have just completed our 2024 carbon audit with One Carbon World and are delighted to announce that, for 6 years in a row, Farrington’s Mellow Yellow continues to be fully carbon neutral.

In 2019, we were classified as the World’s first food brand to be certified carbon and plastic neutral. A wonderful accolade for a small business like ours, and a huge pat on the back for all the work we’re doing on our LEAF Marque farm. But a label like that also carries a lot of responsibility with it, and farming (as any farmer will attest too) is not always an easy journey…

The evermore unreliable weather, pests (we’re looking at you pigeons and flea beetles!), diseases and crop nutrition all play a role in how crops progress. And as farmers we have to respond to that in the best possible way to ensure our land and nature thrives alongside our crops.

With the help of a highly proactive team and by working shoulder to shoulder with some brilliant minds in the industry, we’ve been able to reduce our relative carbon emissions by 30% over the last four years. We’ve done this in a variety of ways: putting solar panels on the roofs of our barns, fitting LED lights, experimenting with new ways of regenerative farming, lowering our farm diesel usage by 33% and using cover crops to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere.

Additionally, the use of organic forms of nitrogen has helped us dramatically reduce our use of synthetic nitrogen by 22%. We’ve tried several ideas in our soil over the years, with sewage sludge being a mainstay, providing a healthy cocktail of carbon, phosphate, nitrogen, sulphur, zinc and more to energise the soil and feed all those important microorganisms. Our latest trial with molasses is proving a real winner as it feeds bacteria in the soil, which in turn nourish the crops.

Doing the right thing for the land is woven into the fabric of Farrington Oils. Yes, we could do things quicker. Yes, we could do things in a more cost effective way. But that would mean compromises would be made – including the health of the soil.  Given the world’s soils actually hold more than three times the amount of carbon than is in the atmosphere, we simply don’t want to take that risk.

So, we’ll continue to navigate this challenging and enlightening road, work collectively with organisations like LEAF and One Carbon World to constantly improve what we do, whilst sourcing viable, long-term solutions that support us in staying true to our ethos of healthy soils = healthy oils.

Read more about our Sustainability Credentials