Cornish beef farmer Ben Thomas has been named the 2026 Carbon Farmer of the Year, with arable farms from Norfolk and Lincolnshire making up the rest of the shortlist.
Mr Thomas runs an extensive beef system at Treveddoe Farm in Cornwall. The other finalists were Stephen and Catherine Temple of Copies Green Farm, Norfolk, who run a dairy and arable business, and Sam Done of Manor Farm, Lincolnshire, an arable grower.
The winners were announced on 15 October at the Farm Carbon Toolkit’s (FCT) Carbon Farming day at FarmED. The competition is now in its fourth year, is organised by FCT and is sponsored by HSBC UK Agriculture. It looks for farmers and growers who are changing how they manage their land to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The judges were Steve Dunkley, Nick Hunt, Mark Self, Geraint May of HSBC UK and Anthony Ellis of FCT. They praised all three finalists for finding where emissions come from on their farms and building strategies both to reduce them and to lock more carbon into soils and non-crop biomass.
Mr Ellis, FCT’s Senior Farm Advisor, said the finalists’ very different farm types were less of a problem for judging than they might seem, because the judges were assessing how each farmer cut emissions and increased carbon storage within their own system.
“All three of our finalists are very climate aware farmers,” he said. “But Ben’s desire to prove that an extensive system can efficiently produce top quality food and be carbon negative made him our winner.”
Grace O’Dwyer, Deputy Head of Agriculture Business Banking at HSBC, said the finalists showed that “productive, profitable businesses can also deliver meaningful environmental benefits”.
All three finalists will host farm walks so other farmers can see their approaches in practice. Details are at farmcarbontoolkit.org.uk.
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