Work out your farm’s greenhouse gas emissions from stock, feed and fertiliser inputs

This calculator will step you through providing details about your farm, stock and stock movements, and the fertiliser and feed used in your financial year. It uses this information to estimate your farm’s greenhouse gas emissions.

It uses the Ministry for Primary Industries’ Farm Emissions Method (FEM)

The calculator presents your emissions on a split-gas basis - providing details on your methane, nitrous oxide and direct carbon dioxide emissions by source.

This calculator is not a regulatory tool. Any data provided is not accessible to the Ministry for Primary Industries or other government departments.

This calculator is for anyone farming sheep, beef, dairy or deer in New Zealand.

It has been designed for farmers wanting to understand and reduce their on-farm emissions.

To get an accurate result, you’ll need to provide the following details about your farm(s):

• Region and farm class
• Farm area, if you wish to see your results on a per effective hectare basis
• What fertilisers you’ve purchased (or are planning to purchase)
• Stock numbers and classes, including breed, actual or anticipated movements, deaths, and births
• What feed you’ve used (or are planning to use)
• Milk production details (dairy farms only)
• Daily average hours in off-paddock structures connected to effluent management systems (dairy farms only)
• Details about your emission reducing tools and methods, such as EcoPond™ treatments and nProve Methane scorecard (sheep with low methane genetics)

Learn more about how the calculation works

The New Zealand Institute for Bioeconomy Science (BSI) has developed this web calculator, supported by funding from the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI), to help farmers calculate their emissions using the MPI standardised method of calculation, the Farm Emissions Method. The method was developed with assistance from a technical advisory group and industry input.

Any information you provide is private and is not shared unless you choose to do so.

Read our data privacy statement

You can expect annual updates. Our latest version was released in April 2026 and updates how farm emissions are calculated to better reflect real on-farm practices and the actions farmers can take to reduce emissions. The release improves how mitigation options and complex farm systems are represented, aligns the method with the latest national inventory updates, and strengthens data checks to support confidence in results.

Key changes include:

• New mitigation options – low methane sheep genetics and EcoPond™ effluent treatment
• A refreshed approach to estimating manure management emissions that draws on data collected by farmers for demonstrating compliance with Grass Fed Standards (Dairy only)
• Adding organic fertiliser and liming
• Version control – what happens to calculations performed under previous versions
• Alignment with the latest national greenhouse gas inventory updates

Detail on previous releases is available here: Ministry for Primary Industries' Farm Emissions Method

We’ve put together user guides and walkthrough videos plus answers to frequently asked questions.