# How do I calculate a mushroom farm's carbon footprint per kg?

Canonical: https://senseible.earth/answers/mushroom-farm-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.

- [Cold storage energy per tonne](https://senseible.earth/answers/cold-storage-energy-per-tonne)
- [Product carbon footprint calculator](https://senseible.earth/calculators/product-carbon-footprint)

Sources: [IPCC 2006 Guidelines, Volume 2 Energy (fuel defaults)](https://www.ipcc-nggip.iges.or.jp/public/2006gl/vol2.html), [CEA CO2 Baseline Database, version 21.0](https://cea.nic.in/cdm-co2-baseline-database/?lang=en), [GHG Protocol Corporate Standard](https://ghgprotocol.org/corporate-standard)

Last reviewed 2026-10-21.