en
Across the world, farmers are increasingly adopting more regenerative approaches to how they farm. That means lengthening rotations, establishing cover crops, moving to reduced or no tillage, sometimes buying new equipment. Each of these requires upfront investment. Cutting synthetic inputs saves cash straight away, but carries yield and quality risk. All of it carries agronomic risk, and too often that risk sits with the farmer. Where the benefits come, in soil structure and in input bills, they usually take several years to show.
However, food companies are also investing to support farmers’ through the transition, with financing for insetting: investing in emissions reductions inside your own supply chain rather than buying offsets outside it. For regenerative agriculture to continue scaling at the pace required to secure the transition, innovative approaches to financing and investment across the food value chain are required, including around approaches to insetting..Until now this has mostly been unilateral: one company funds the transition alone among its own suppliers, carrying the cost, the risk and the burden of proof, for a market signal limited to its own share of the volume.
Co-investment changes the equation. Two or more partners in the same value chain fund the transition together, split the investment, share responsibility for the outcomes, and send the farmer a signal that no single buyer can do alone. Each of them still does it for a return. Neither partner is offsetting: each reports the reductions inside its own scope 3 inventory.
“Co-investing is a huge opportunity for players at all stages in agricultural food value chains to unlock bigger and quicker progress towards their regenerative goals. We're delighted to have helped two valued partners reach this agreement, which can serve as a blueprint for others looking to turn theory into action on co-investing.”
Chuck De Liedekerke, CEO and founder, Soil Capital
This co-investment
The wider programmes it builds on
Making it work required overcoming some practical barriers. Royal Canin and Roquette operate at different stages of the value chain and use different approaches to allocating emissions. Royal Canin uses economic allocation, commonly used in the pet food industry, while Roquette uses mass allocation, commonly used in starch processing. Their figures are therefore not directly comparable.
The breakthrough was recognising that methodological alignment did not need to be a precondition for collaboration.
Rather than forcing one company to adopt the other's approach, Soil Capital provides the same underlying farm-level data through both calculation systems, allowing each company to use verified data in line with its own accounting methodology and relevant guidance.
That may sound technical, but it really matters. Differences in accounting approaches present a practical barrier to investment across complex supply chains. This partnership shows that complete harmonisation is not always necessary. What matters is trusted primary data, clear rules over claims and a system that allows different businesses to use the evidence credibly within their own reporting frameworks.
When a farmer sees a consumer brand and its supplier commit together, over several years, the demand reads differently. It stops looking like one buyer's procurement decision and starts looking like where the market is going. That visibility is what justifies buying equipment or taking the agronomic risk of trialling a new crop. Alongside it come tailored agronomic support from Soil Capital agronomists and payment based on verified outcomes rather than on declared practices. Results vary from farm to farm and from year to year.
Sébastien Neveux farms 330 hectares at Rugny, in the Yonne, on clay-limestone soils. After a major crop failure in 2020 he moved to no-till and widened his cropping from three crops to around fifteen species, wheat, rapeseed, sunflower, lucerne, lentils, chickpeas and buckwheat among them, with multi-species cover crops between cash crops.
“Seeing partners like Roquette and Royal Canin commit alongside us in this transition today is essential; it proves that the environmental value we create on the ground is finally being recognised by the downstream value chain.”
Sébastien Neveux, cereal farmer
The combined effect is straightforward. Agricultural emissions are becoming harder to leave out of the accounts, and the pressure falls across the value chain rather than on one company within it. Primary data collected on farm and independently verified becomes the basis of scope 3 reporting rather than an optional extra, and it is the foundation a shared claim rests on.
The structure is deliberately replicable. It applies to other crops, other geographies and other supplier and buyer configurations, wherever two players share an agricultural supply chain and a common interest in cutting scope 3 emissions. What makes it worth replicating is not the shared cost but the fact that each partner can build its own return into the arrangement, without either of them having to charge more for the finished product. Royal Canin and Roquette started with one crop and one country. The first deal is always the hardest to build, because everything has to be invented: the claim rules, the data flows, the contractual language. Every replication after it will be faster.
“The ambition is that this partnership can attract additional suppliers to do the same thing. It's about expanded impact, and ultimately more benefits for farmers.”
Rémi Rocca, Global VP Sustainability, Royal Canin
Five conditions made this first agreement work. They are set out one by one in the case study.
Two or more partners in the same value chain jointly fund the transition to regenerative practices on the farms they share, instead of one company funding it alone. Cost, risk and responsibility are split, and outcomes are allocated between the partners under rules agreed in advance.
Insetting describes where the investment happens, inside your own supply chain rather than outside it. Co-investment describes who pays. A co-investment is a form of insetting funded by several value chain partners at once.
Each company claims only the share of outcomes it finances, under claim-sharing rules agreed before the contract is signed. The corresponding certificates are then retired on a registry, which makes each claim traceable and reduces the risk of the same reduction being claimed twice.
Yes. Reductions and removals are quantified in accordance with ISO 14064-2, the international standard for project-level greenhouse gas accounting, and the results are subject to an independent annual audit by TÜV Rheinland.
Yes. It requires a shared agricultural supply chain, two partners with a common interest in reducing scope 3 emissions, and an operator able to produce independently verified data usable under each partner's accounting method.
Across the world, farmers are increasingly adopting more regenerative approaches to how they farm. That means lengthening rotations, establishing cover crops, moving to reduced or no tillage, sometimes buying new equipment. Each of these requires upfront investment. Cutting synthetic inputs saves cash straight away, but carries yield and quality risk. All of it carries agronomic risk, and too often that risk sits with the farmer. Where the benefits come, in soil structure and in input bills, they usually take several years to show.
However, food companies are also investing to support farmers’ through the transition, with financing for insetting: investing in emissions reductions inside your own supply chain rather than buying offsets outside it. For regenerative agriculture to continue scaling at the pace required to secure the transition, innovative approaches to financing and investment across the food value chain are required, including around approaches to insetting..Until now this has mostly been unilateral: one company funds the transition alone among its own suppliers, carrying the cost, the risk and the burden of proof, for a market signal limited to its own share of the volume.
Co-investment changes the equation. Two or more partners in the same value chain fund the transition together, split the investment, share responsibility for the outcomes, and send the farmer a signal that no single buyer can do alone. Each of them still does it for a return. Neither partner is offsetting: each reports the reductions inside its own scope 3 inventory.
“Co-investing is a huge opportunity for players at all stages in agricultural food value chains to unlock bigger and quicker progress towards their regenerative goals. We're delighted to have helped two valued partners reach this agreement, which can serve as a blueprint for others looking to turn theory into action on co-investing.”
Chuck De Liedekerke, CEO and founder, Soil Capital
This co-investment
The wider programmes it builds on
Making it work required overcoming some practical barriers. Royal Canin and Roquette operate at different stages of the value chain and use different approaches to allocating emissions. Royal Canin uses economic allocation, commonly used in the pet food industry, while Roquette uses mass allocation, commonly used in starch processing. Their figures are therefore not directly comparable.
The breakthrough was recognising that methodological alignment did not need to be a precondition for collaboration.
Rather than forcing one company to adopt the other's approach, Soil Capital provides the same underlying farm-level data through both calculation systems, allowing each company to use verified data in line with its own accounting methodology and relevant guidance.
That may sound technical, but it really matters. Differences in accounting approaches present a practical barrier to investment across complex supply chains. This partnership shows that complete harmonisation is not always necessary. What matters is trusted primary data, clear rules over claims and a system that allows different businesses to use the evidence credibly within their own reporting frameworks.
When a farmer sees a consumer brand and its supplier commit together, over several years, the demand reads differently. It stops looking like one buyer's procurement decision and starts looking like where the market is going. That visibility is what justifies buying equipment or taking the agronomic risk of trialling a new crop. Alongside it come tailored agronomic support from Soil Capital agronomists and payment based on verified outcomes rather than on declared practices. Results vary from farm to farm and from year to year.
Sébastien Neveux farms 330 hectares at Rugny, in the Yonne, on clay-limestone soils. After a major crop failure in 2020 he moved to no-till and widened his cropping from three crops to around fifteen species, wheat, rapeseed, sunflower, lucerne, lentils, chickpeas and buckwheat among them, with multi-species cover crops between cash crops.
“Seeing partners like Roquette and Royal Canin commit alongside us in this transition today is essential; it proves that the environmental value we create on the ground is finally being recognised by the downstream value chain.”
Sébastien Neveux, cereal farmer
The combined effect is straightforward. Agricultural emissions are becoming harder to leave out of the accounts, and the pressure falls across the value chain rather than on one company within it. Primary data collected on farm and independently verified becomes the basis of scope 3 reporting rather than an optional extra, and it is the foundation a shared claim rests on.
The structure is deliberately replicable. It applies to other crops, other geographies and other supplier and buyer configurations, wherever two players share an agricultural supply chain and a common interest in cutting scope 3 emissions. What makes it worth replicating is not the shared cost but the fact that each partner can build its own return into the arrangement, without either of them having to charge more for the finished product. Royal Canin and Roquette started with one crop and one country. The first deal is always the hardest to build, because everything has to be invented: the claim rules, the data flows, the contractual language. Every replication after it will be faster.
“The ambition is that this partnership can attract additional suppliers to do the same thing. It's about expanded impact, and ultimately more benefits for farmers.”
Rémi Rocca, Global VP Sustainability, Royal Canin
Five conditions made this first agreement work. They are set out one by one in the case study.
Two or more partners in the same value chain jointly fund the transition to regenerative practices on the farms they share, instead of one company funding it alone. Cost, risk and responsibility are split, and outcomes are allocated between the partners under rules agreed in advance.
Insetting describes where the investment happens, inside your own supply chain rather than outside it. Co-investment describes who pays. A co-investment is a form of insetting funded by several value chain partners at once.
Each company claims only the share of outcomes it finances, under claim-sharing rules agreed before the contract is signed. The corresponding certificates are then retired on a registry, which makes each claim traceable and reduces the risk of the same reduction being claimed twice.
Yes. Reductions and removals are quantified in accordance with ISO 14064-2, the international standard for project-level greenhouse gas accounting, and the results are subject to an independent annual audit by TÜV Rheinland.
Yes. It requires a shared agricultural supply chain, two partners with a common interest in reducing scope 3 emissions, and an operator able to produce independently verified data usable under each partner's accounting method.
