CRCF & LSRS: What the latest updates mean for Regen Ag Strategies?

How to navigate Land Sector and Removals Standard (LSRS) implementation while securing your climate change mitigation programme?

With the LSRS now published and taking effect next year, companies are verifying how they account for emissions, removals, traceability, and permanence.

‍

This webinar will provide:

Strategic Clarity on LSRS Implementation

• How to ensure if your current GHG initiatives meet the new standard
• What Soil Capital's full LSRS alignment means for your reporting credibility and audit readiness
• Which traceability pathway (physical vs. impact) fits your supply traceability and procurement strategy

A Solution about the Permanence Risk

• FIRST REVEAL: The Soil Capital Permanence Fund—an industry-first financial safeguard
• How this mechanism protects your investments from storage reversals

‍

Q&A with the Audience

‍

1. How does Soil Capital’s Permanence Fund account for reversals that happen that are not the fault of the farmer?

‍

This question points to a critical distinction in carbon accounting: the difference between avoidable and unavoidable reversals.

• Avoidable Reversals: These are carbon losses that occur due to actions (or inactions) within the control of the land manager or farmer (e.g., changing practices).
• Unavoidable Reversals: These are losses caused by broader, uncontrollable climatic events, such as severe droughts or wildfires.

Both the Land Sector and Removals Standard (LSRS) and the Carbon Removal Certification Framework (CRCF) require monitoring both types of reversals and implementing liability structures like buffer accounts.

However, our specific permanence fund is strategically designed to target only the avoidable reversals. This means we focus on scenarios where the land manager has direct agency and influence. For unavoidable reversals, we have a separate, dedicated buffer account in place.‍

‍

Why the Focus on Avoidable Reversals?

The logic is to directly link the interests and incentives of the land managers to the assurance needs of the reporting companies. By focusing our fund on avoidable reversals, we ensure that the mechanism for ongoing monitoring is strongly connected to the farmer's actions. This shared incentive structure is key to long-term success and trust in the regenerative agriculture movement.

‍

2. What is the biggest gap in current carbon removal protocols like CRCF and LSRS for accelerating regenerative agriculture?

‍

The most significant gap currently lies in traceability and supply chain connectivity, particularly in linking field-level carbon removal to corporate Scope 3 reporting requirements (such as those under CSRD).

While protocols show strong alignment on quantification and permanence of carbon removal, traceability was not the primary scope of CRCF, creating a natural disconnect.‍

‍

The Key Challenge Areas:

1. Connecting Field Data to Corporate Reporting: Agribusinesses require clearer European rules and guidance on how verified carbon removals at the field level can be seamlessly integrated into their Scope 3 emissions reporting.
2. Holistic vs. Selective Cropping: True soil regeneration requires a whole-rotation approach or even a landscape-level strategy, extending beyond single field boundaries. However, many agrifood companies are only interested in verifying one or two specific crops within that rotation. Protocols must develop safeguards and rules to connect these two worlds, ensuring a comprehensive, climate-positive transition is driven forward by willing industry partners.

‍

Positive steps are being taken, with the Commission engaging consultants to address these gaps and potentially integrate lessons learned from initiatives like LSRS.

‍

3. Ongoing soil carbon measurement: Does it need to be every year or every five years under the latest standards?

‍

The latest standard provides greater clarity and some flexibility on the frequency of ongoing soil carbon monitoring.

The core requirement is that carbon storage must be monitored across all years of the project. However, the standard acknowledges the variability of agricultural systems (like rotational systems) and allows for flexibility in the monitoring period's calibration and verification.

‍

This means:

• Monitoring must cover every year sequentially.
• The actual calibration and verification (e.g., soil sampling and analysis) can be done in sequential chunks, which could be a one-year period, five years, or even ten years, renewed over time.

‍

In short, while monitoring data must account for every year, the required fieldwork and verification can be done in multi-year, sequential blocks.

‍

4. How do the new quantification requirements of the CRCF and LSRS standards impact key models like CoolFarm Tool, Regrow, and others?

‍

The latest CRCF and LSRS requirements significantly influence climate models like CoolFarm Tool and Regrow by emphasizing the need to:

1. Separate Emissions from Removals: Models must clearly differentiate between greenhouse gas emissions and carbon removals.
2. Incorporate Empirical Data: There is a strong, ongoing trend requiring the integration of real-world, site-specific data. This move towards 'Tier 3' modeling, while not new, is accelerated by the standards.

We see models adapting; for example, the CoolFarm Tool is evolving into the CoolFarm Platform, moving from a Tier 1 toward a Tier 2, and potentially a future Tier 3, model.

‍

‍Important Note: Not every model used for preliminary screening across entire supply chains needs to be fully Tier 3 compliant from the outset. Models like these are crucial for identifying the initial scale of removal opportunities. Once a priority is established, businesses can then invest in the more rigorous, data-intensive Tier 3 models.