Table of Contents
Introduction
Agriculture and land use play an ambivalent role in the global climate crisis: they are significant sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but they also represent one of our largest potential carbon sinks through sequestration in soils and biomass. Historically, corporate climate commitments and voluntary carbon markets have been plagued by fragmented methodologies, low-quality data, and accusations of “greenwashing.” To address these systemic issues, two frameworks have recently emerged to standardize, regulate, and enhance the integrity of carbon accounting in the agricultural sector: the GHG Protocol Land Sector and Carbon Removals Standard (LSRS) and the European Union’s Carbon Removals and Carbon Agriculture Certification Framework (CRCF).
Although both frameworks aim to bring transparency and scientific rigor to carbon agriculture, they serve different primary functions. The LSRS acts as a global rulebook for corporate accounting regarding Scope 3 reporting in the value chain, while the CRCF is an EU-wide regulatory certification framework designed to govern the generation of high-quality voluntary carbon credits. This article offers a comprehensive comparison of the LSRS and the CRCF, examining their underlying methodologies, structural differences, and the profound implications they hold for farmers, project developers, and agri-food companies transitioning to “net zero.”
GHG Protocol’s Land Sector and Carbon Removals Standard (LSRS)
Background and Strategic Objective
Developed through a partnership between the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), the GHG Protocol the world’s most widely used framework for measuring and managing corporate GHG emissions.
The news Land Sector and Carbon Removals Standard (LSRS) is a sector-specific standard designed to guide companies in accounting for CO2 emissions and removals from agriculture, land use, and technological carbon capture. It replaces previous vague guidelines with a highly structured accounting framework, enabling companies to credibly track their progress toward Science-Based Targets (SBTi) and “net-zero” commitments. The standard will take effect on January 1, 2027, and will apply to the 2026 reporting year. It is important to note that while the publication of the LSRS and CRCF standards lays the regulatory groundwork, their technical implementation will be detailed in a supplementary guidance document, scheduled for the second quarter of 2026.
For agri-food companies, this document will be key to translating theoretical requirements into robust Measurement, Reporting, and Verification (MRV) protocols, ensuring full compliance for their emissions inventories and carbon sequestration projects.
Disaggregated reporting and major accounting categories
A fundamental change introduced by the LSRS is the strict requirement for disaggregated reporting. Historically, companies often offset their land-related emissions and removals, relying heavily on generalized average emission factors. Under the LSRS, CO2 emissions and carbon removals must be reported separately. The standard structures the “physical GHG inventory” into distinct required categories, including:
- Land-related emissions: This includes emissions related to land-use change (e.g., deforestation), net biogenic CO₂ emissions related to land management, emissions from biogenic products, and emissions related to agricultural production and land management (e.g., fertilizer use, livestock methane).
- CO2 removals: This covers CO2 removals related to land management (e.g., carbon sequestered in soil or biomass) and is currently considered an optional reporting category.
Traceability and Land Management Units (LMUs)
Traceability is one of the most significant challenges for corporate claims, and the LSRS addresses this by linking Scope 3 emissions to its ability to trace agricultural products back to their source. The standard introduces a flexible framework based on a company’s level of traceability maturity:
- Limited traceability: Companies relying on mass balance models or supply zones must use average global or jurisdictional emission factors.
- High traceability: To claim specific emission reductions or eliminations, companies must trace materials back to the Land Management Unit (LMU) — that is, primary data from specific farms or groups of farms. The LSRS effectively creates a “traceability premium”, where agri-food companies are strongly incentivized to invest in primary data at the farm level to report higher climate impacts and achieve their SBTi targets. In this case, traceability is not based solely on quality and safety key performance indicators (KPIs), but also incorporates environmental KPIs.
Persistence, carbon sequestration, and carbon leakage
To report carbon removals, companies must establish a system to monitor permanent storage in order to detect and report any carbon loss, known as reversals (e.g., if a farmer plows a previously no-till field, releasing sequestered carbon into the atmosphere). In addition, the LSRS introduces the concept of land-related carbon leakage. For activities considered to be at “high risk of leakage”—such as the diversion of food crops to biofuels, which displaces food production and causes emissions related to land-use change elsewhere—companies must calculate and report this leakage separately from their physical inventory.
In particular, due to a lack of consensus, forest carbon accounting was excluded from Version 1 of the LSRS, with a request for information planned to address this gap.
The EU Carbon Removal and Carbon Agriculture Certification Framework (CRCF)
Background, Scope, and Objectives
The Carbon Removal and Carbon Agriculture Certification Framework (CRCF) was proposed by the European Commission as a central component of the European Green Deal, which aims for a 90% reduction in emissions by 2040. The CRCF establishes the first EU-wide voluntary framework to certify high-quality carbon removal and carbon farming projects, addressing the fragmented landscape of national and private certification schemes (such as France’s Low Carbon Label).
Set to take effect in late 2026, the framework establishes separate methodologies for certifying activities such as peatland restoration, agroforestry through tree planting, and soil management on mineral agricultural lands.
The QU.A.L.ITY Criteria
To receive an EU-certified label, carbon credits generated under the CRCF must pass four rigorous tests, summarized by the acronym QU.A.L.ITY:
- Quantification: Emissions reductions must be measured accurately, taking into account emissions associated with the entire lifecycle of the project itself.
- Additionality: Projects must go beyond standard regulatory compliance and demonstrate that they require revenue from carbon credits to be financially viable.
- Long-term Storage: The project must demonstrate that the carbon remains stored. For temporary storage methods such as carbon farming, certificates are tied to strict monitoring periods.
- Sustainability: The activity must not “cause significant harm” to the environment and must actively generate positive co-benefits for biodiversity and soil health.
Disclaimer: The following sections are based on the draft version of the delegated act; they are therefore subject to change when the final version of the act is published.
MRV requirements, baselines, and uncertainty deductions
Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (MRV) is mandatory and strictly regulated under the CRCF. Operators must submit highly structured activity and monitoring plans. For quantification, the CRCF promotes a “measurement and modeling” approach, relying on validated process-based models combined with empirical measurements. Crucially, Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) must be measured through physical soil sampling at the start of the project, covering at least 20% of representative locations across the main soil layers to a minimum depth of 30 cm.
To verify the model's performance, resampling is required every 5 years. The CRCF emphasizes statistical accuracy; carbon developers must apply an uncertainty reduction factor — capped at a maximum of 10% or equal to the estimated uncertainty (derived from model, measurement, and sampling errors). Consequently, final certified credits are equal to quantified removals minus this uncertainty reduction. Baselines under the CRCF are activity-specific and must be constructed using at least three years of historical activity data prior to the start of the project. These baselines are dynamically projected forward and updated at each recertification.
Periods of activity, monitoring, and liability
The CRCF sets specific timelines for carbon farming projects to ensure continuity.
For soil carbon projects, the Project Duration (the period during which credits can be issued) must be between 5 and 20 years. However, the framework mandates a strict monitoring period that extends over the duration of the activity period plus an additional 10 years. This requirement, in particular, is subject to change following the expert review of the draft delegated act.
Operators must submit monitoring reports at least every five years, or within one year if an unavoidable disruption (e.g., extreme weather conditions, natural disaster) occurs. To manage these risks, operators must participate in a reserve fund, setting aside a portion of their credits to insure against unforeseen carbon reversals, with liability explicitly defined.
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Comparative Analysis: GHG Protocol LSRS vs . EU CRCF
Although GHG Protocol LSRS and the EU’s CRCF share the ultimate goal of promoting high-integrity agricultural decarbonization and reducing greenwashing, they operate under different mechanisms, scopes, and end goals.
Nature of the framework: Corporate accounting vs. regulatory reporting
The most fundamental difference lies in their nature: the LSRS is a detailed “how-to” methodology for corporate GHG inventories. It does not issue tradable credits; rather, it dictates how global companies (such as agri-food companies) must account for Scope 3 emissions and removals in the supply chain in their annual sustainability reports.
Conversely, the CRCF is a regulatory certification framework designed to govern the Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM) within the European Union. It is designed to generate distinct and tradable carbon credits. Whereas the LSRS is designed for reporting and corporate strategy, the CRCF is designed for formal third-party audits, compliance, and the issuance of carbon credits.
Approaches to Supply Chain Traceability
Because they serve different purposes, frameworks approach traceability differently. Traceability is currently the biggest obstacle to scaling up investments in agriculture. The LSRS offers pragmatic supply chain models. Recognizing the complexity of global food supply chains, it allows for the use of mass balance models and supply zone averages when maintaining physical identity is impossible. However, to incentivize better data, it requires primary UGT (farm-level) data for companies wishing to claim direct reductions.
The CRCF, as a project-level certification system, focuses strictly on rules at the plot level. Because it generates localized carbon credits, physical traceability back to the specific plot of land where carbon farming practices are carried out is absolute and non-negotiable.
Management of standby duty and shift changes
Both experts acknowledge that biological carbon storage is highly sensitive to disruptions (e.g., from tilling or climate shocks). Under the LSRS, permanence is managed through continuous corporate reporting. Companies must continuously monitor reversals, updating their annual GHG inventories if a previously claimed removal is released. The CRCF imposes strict legal liability and timelines. It separates the “Activity Period” from the “Monitoring Period,” legally binding operators to monitor soil carbon for 10 years after the end of the activity period. Furthermore, the CRCF uses a collective reserve fund to insure against natural reversals, whereas the LSRS requires the reporting company to adjust its own inventory.
Additionality and environmental co-benefits
Additionality—proving that a project would not have taken place without carbon financing—is treated with varying degrees of rigor. The CRCF requires rigorous additionality tests, including regulatory controls (ensuring that the practice is not mandated by law), incentive tests (avoiding double counting with subsidies such as the CAP), and rigorous financial viability tests.
In addition, the CRCF legally requires that projects demonstrate positive co-benefits for biodiversity and ecosystems through peer-reviewed literature or results-based sustainability indicators. The LSRS, as a pure GHG accounting standard, focuses on physical of greenhouse gases rather than market-based financial additionality tests. It tracks actual emissions and removals within a defined scope, leaving market additionality and biodiversity co-benefits outside its primary scope (although it strictly regulates “land-related carbon leakage” to ensure holistic accounting).
Commercial Implications and the Future of MRV
The simultaneous rollout of the LSRS (effective in 2027) and the CRCF (taking effect in late 2026) signals a structural shift for the agricultural sector and agri-food supply chains.
The transition to primary data at the farm level
For decades, companies have relied on generic secondary emission factors (such as national averages or high-level LCA databases) to estimate their Scope 3 agricultural footprints. This approach is now obsolete. The LSRS explicitly requires a shift to empirical, highly traceable primary data (Land Management Units) for companies wishing to claim precise reductions and removals. Similarly, the CRCF’s mandate for historical baseline data, physical soil sampling every 5 years, and rigorous uncertainty deductions means that carbon developers can no longer rely on generalized models without field verification.
The demand from businesses for primary farm data is no longer just a “nice-to-have”—it is becoming a strict regulatory and reporting requirement.
The Crucial Role of Digital MRV Platforms
This surge in data requirements creates a massive administrative and technical burden. As a result, digital Measurement, Reporting, and Verification (dMRV) platforms—such as MyEasyFarm — are evolving from optional technological aids into essential components of the agricultural supply chain infrastructure.
To comply with the CRCF and the LSRS, dMRV systems must now provide:
- Geospatial Monitoring and Remote Sensing: To establish boundaries, verify historical baselines over a 3-year period, and monitor current practices without relying on excessively costly manual site visits.
- Automated model integration: Integrate with validated process-based models (e.g., AMG, Roth-C) to accurately calculate GHG fluxes and changes in soil organic carbon stocks, while quantifying the statistical uncertainty required by the CRCF.
- Detection of land-use changes: Use satellite-based AI to monitor fields for unauthorized plowing, overgrazing, or biomass loss, fulfilling the monitoring mandates for the permanence of both frameworks.
- Disaggregated reporting: Automatically separate emissions from removals to generate LSRS-compliant exports for corporate SBTi and CSRD compliance.
Conclusion
The introduction of the GHG Protocol Land Sector and Carbon Removals Standard (LSRS) and the EU’s Carbon Removals and Carbon Agriculture Certification Framework (CRCF) marks the end of the “Wild West” era of voluntary carbon agriculture. Although they operate in different spheres—the LSRS defining GHG accounting for global companies and the CRCF regulating the European voluntary carbon market—they are fundamentally aligned in their overarching mission: to eliminate greenwashing by enforcing absolute transparency, scientific rigor, and the collection of empirical data.
For European farmers, these frameworks offer a clearer—albeit more demanding—path to monetization through certified carbon credits or supply chain premiums. For businesses, they provide a standardized set of rules that transforms vague Scope 3 commitments in verifiable climate action.
Ultimately, the success of the LSRS and the CRCF will depend on the agricultural sector’s ability to deploy robust digital MRV technologies capable of seamlessly bridging the gap between the field and the spreadsheet.
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