How do I calculate a mushroom farm's carbon footprint per kg?
Add electricity for air conditioning, humidifiers and cold rooms at 0.710 kg CO2 per kWh and generator or boiler fuel, then divide by kg of mushrooms sold. Climate-controlled growing rooms usually make electricity the main on-farm source; compost materials are bought-in inputs.
On the farm
- Electricity for growing-room cooling, humidifiers and fans.
- Boiler fuel for compost pasteurisation, where used.
- Cold storage before dispatch.
Inputs
- Straw, manure and other compost materials.
- Spawn.
- Packaging.
Per kg
Divide by kg of fresh mushrooms sold. Composting itself releases some methane and N2O; note it as a known gap if you do not calculate it.
Worked example: button mushroom farm (one month, illustrative inputs)
- Electricity: 20,000 kWh x 0.710 = 14,200 kg CO2
- Diesel: 200 litres x 2.68 = 536 kg CO2
- Mushrooms sold (kg): 10,000
- Total: 14,736 / 10,000 = 1.474 kg CO2 per kg
- Add compost materials and spawn for the full figure
Inputs are illustrative; use your bills and dispatch records.
What Senseible does here
Senseible reads diesel, electricity and fertiliser invoices into dated, fingerprinted records that support a farm or crop figure. Field emissions such as N2O and methane are calculated with IPCC defaults in your method note and labelled as estimates, not measured values.
Sources: IPCC 2006 Guidelines, Volume 2 Energy (fuel defaults), CEA CO2 Baseline Database, version 21.0, GHG Protocol Corporate Standard
Last reviewed 2026-10-21.