Europe

Case study

Agreena’s Soil Carbon Program

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Participating organization

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Context

The degradation of Europe’s arable soils poses both environmental and financial risks, making agriculture a shared material concern across the food value chain. In this landscape – characterized by intensive, large-scale cereal and oilseed production – soil carbon loss, declining input efficiency and increasing climate variability threaten long-term farm viability, food security and corporate supply resilience. Limiting climate change to 1.5°C will require the expansion of regenerative agriculture from covering an estimated 15% of global cropland today to 40% by 2030. For Europe, this goal would require 40 million hectares of farmland to adopt regenerative practices by 2030.1 To finance and accelerate the transition, Europe needs more comprehensive and holistic financial support mechanisms that can scale to reach many farmers.

is the goal for limiting climate change

of global cropland today is covered by regenerative agriculture

by 2030 is the goal for global cropland under regenerative agriculture

Key facts

Landscape:
Agreena UK Arable Landscape (2023), United Kingdom.
Crops:
Arable crops
Organizations involved:
Agreena (project developer and technology provider), Earthood (validation and verification body), Verra (standard registry) and participating UK arable farmers. In the UK, Agreena collaborates with a range of corporate buyers, both within and beyond the agri-food value chain. These include organizations like Radisson Hotel Group and Helical.
Scope:
138 farmers engaged, covering over 53,000 hectares in the UK in 2023
Total capital deployed:
EUR €15 million in carbon credit payouts to farmers across Europe to date, including approximately EUR €1.5 million distributed to UK farmers
Timeline:
Started in 2020 as a long-term program (no end date)

Ambition of the project

Agreena operates Europe’s largest soil carbon program as a trusted intermediary between farmers and the broader ecosystem. Supporting farmers in the challenging transition to regenerative practices, improving long-term productivity, enhancing environmental outcomes and unlocking the climate potential of soil as a carbon sink are at the core of its mission. Its platform provides both financial incentives and technical support to enable the adoption of these practices as they are particularly important during the critical early years of transition.

A robust technology stack, combining remote sensing, satellite imagery and artificial intelligence (AI)-driven models underpin Agreena’s program. The aim is to quantify on-farm practice changes and generate high-integrity, third-party verified carbon outcomes. The organization connects these outcomes to the voluntary carbon market and to corporate value chains, helping food and beverage companies and other supply chain actors meet decarbonization targets, strengthen resilience and comply with evolving reporting requirements – while delivering tangible incentives to farmers on the ground. With its program, the organization aims to improve the ecological functions of key food-producing landscapes in Europe, with the long-term objectives of mitigating supply chain risks and supporting food and nutrition security.

Agreena has a global footprint – engaging some 2,300 farmers over 4.5 million hectares of farmland in 20 countries. This case study focuses specifically on a composite view of Agreena’s work with arable farms across several regions in the United Kingdom in 2023, but it typifies the agronomic conditions and regenerative potential seen across several European landscapes.

Agreena has a global footprint – engaging some

farmers over

hectares of farmland in

countries

The program at a glance

Agreena leads the program’s design, implementation and digital monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV), acting as both project developer and technology provider. Meanwhile, the organization’s demand partners – including Mars Petcare, Radisson Hotel Group and Ryanair – play a pivotal financing role by purchasing high-integrity carbon credits and supporting the regenerative transition through their supply chains. Alongside direct engagement with farmers, Agreena works with a broad network of stakeholders – including agri-food companies, financial institutions, carbon market actors, agricultural partners and implementation organizations supporting farmer onboarding and practice adoption.

Farmers are engaged and enrolled in the Agreena program through a combination of targeted outreach, collaboration with local partners and participation in agricultural events and field days. Eligible participants are typically commercial arable farmers seeking to transition to more regenerative, climate-aligned production systems.

Credits: Agreena

Once enrolled, farmers receive support in implementing a range of regenerative practices – such as reduced or no tillage, cover cropping and the use of organic fertilizers. The design of the program is flexible and farmer-centric, allowing producers to select and phase in practices based on their specific agronomic conditions, including soil type, weather patterns and operational capacity. There are no rigid prescriptions or minimum practice thresholds, which enables broad participation and encourages continuous improvement over time.

While Agreena is not an agronomic advisory company, it works in close collaboration with a network of local implementation partners and agronomists who provide on-the-ground technical assistance. In parallel, the organization is developing a suite of decision-support and benchmarking tools – including profitability calculators, bare soil index metrics and crop rotation scoring frameworks – to equip farmers with data-driven insights that enhance both environmental outcomes and long-term business resilience.

Financing model

The risks of transitioning to regenerative agriculture sit largely with farmers, as they often face upfront investment needs without guaranteed returns. Private capital is therefore critical to de-risking this transition and supporting the adoption of more sustainable practices. While public policy initiatives such as the UK’s Environmental Land Management (ELM) scheme and EU-level programs like common agricultural policy (CAP) eco-schemes and the Green Deal reflect growing policy alignment, financial incentives and tailored support mechanisms remain fragmented.

Agreena’s program addresses this gap by directly linking private climate finance to on-farm outcomes through performance-based carbon payments and practice-linked support. In parallel, it offers verifiable impact to corporate and financial sector actors. For these stakeholders, investment in regenerative landscapes is a tool for achieving net-zero targets and delivers supply chain continuity, compliance readiness and reputational resilience in a shifting regulatory landscape.

The majority of funding (up to 85%) flows directly to farmers to incentivize practice change and deliver verified carbon outcomes. The model rests on blended capital that combines private investment, carbon revenues and supply chain engagement.

The financing structure includes:

Carbon credit revenues from voluntary market buyers seeking to compensate for hard-to-abate emissions. These revenues enable performance-based payments to farmers based on verified outcomes, with up to 85% of the value from credit sales returned directly to farmers.

Supply chain financing from agri-food companies aiming to reduce scope 3 emissions and enhance the resilience of their sourcing activities.

Farmer co-financing mechanisms, such as the ability to stack carbon revenue with loan or insurance products, under development. While not yet active in the UK, Agreena has piloted such models with Raiffeisen Bank and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) in other geographies.

Strategic and impact-aligned investment into Agreena itself – over EUR €70 million to date – from a mix of venture capital, family offices and public innovation funds. This funding supports platform infrastructure development, proprietary digital MRV (dMRV) systems and the expansion of farmer services. Investors include Giant Ventures, Gullspång Re:food, HV Capital, Kinnevik, AENU, Anthemis, and Denmark’s Export & Innovation Fund.

Agreena has distributed over EUR €15 million in carbon payments to participating farmers across Europe, including EUR €1.5 million to farmers in the UK. These payments typically range from EUR €20 to EUR €100 per hectare per year, depending on the regenerative practices adopted and the outcomes achieved.

Monitoring, reporting and verification

Agreena has designed its program so that farmers retain full ownership of their outcomes and choose how they are distributed or sold. This approach ensures that finance is both outcome-linked and farmer-centric, providing tangible, traceable impact while supporting broader corporate climate and sustainability goals.

Farmers receive up to 85% of the revenue generated from credit sales. This farmer-first model – combined with EUR €15 million already distributed in carbon payments – makes a clear business case: it unlocks new income streams while supporting practice change that reduces costs and enhances long-term resilience. For instance, compared to conventional tillage, farmers adopting no-till under Agreena’s carbon program saved an average of GBP £119.99 per hectare.2 When multiplied by the area under no-till conditions, this results in savings of GBP £3 million across the project area in tillage change alone.

“Regenerative farming has completely reshaped how we think about the future of our land. It’s not just about reducing inputs or chasing yields – it’s about building resilience, improving our soils and leaving the farm in better condition for the next generation. The support from Agreena has helped us turn sustainability into a practical, profitable part of our business.”

– Arable farmer in the UK

Yield performance remained strong throughout the transition. While there are common concerns about productivity losses during regenerative adoption, Agreena-supported farmers recorded an average winter wheat yield of 8.44 metric tons per hectare in 2023, slightly above the national average of 8.0 metric tons. Some farmers have reported a 25% margin improvement compared to local conventional systems in neighboring farms, underscoring the economic viability of regenerative practices.

During the first three years of the program, Agreena had a 95% retention rate.

metric tons was the national average for winter wheat

margin improvement was reported by some farmers compared to conventional systems

retention rate during the first three years of the program

Monitoring, reporting and verification

Agreena’s program collectively targets several environmental and socio-economic goals, including restoring soil organic carbon, improving soil health through practices such as cover cropping and reduced tillage, and strengthening farmer livelihoods by supporting profitability and resilience through new income streams and lower input dependency.

The organization applies a science-based approach to monitoring and verification through its proprietary dMRV system, which aligns with the Verra (an organization operating standards in environmental markets) VM0042 methodology for quantifying soil carbon outcomes. The system integrates farmer-reported data, satellite monitoring, soil sampling and machine learning-based models to quantify and report field-level practice adoption and carbon impact. Earthood (a validation and verification body) independently audits outcomes, with final credit issuance overseen by Verra. This multi-actor structure ensures scientific rigor, traceability and transparency.

In parallel, Agreena is also undergoing validation and verification with SustainCERT to enable the generation of verified greenhouse gas (GHG) outcomes for use in corporate scope 3 reporting. This process will also support the transfer of eligible GHG outcomes to supply chain partners selected by agri-food companies, further expanding the value of the program beyond credit sales.

Table 2 outlines Agreena’s 2023 performance on key impact areas in its UK operations. To contextualize this case study within the broader program, Agreena currently works with over 2,300 farmers managing 4.5 million hectares in 20 countries. Across this full footprint, farmers achieve 0.3 to 0.5 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e)/ha/year in emissions reductions and 0.6 to 0.8 metric tons CO2e/ha/year on average in carbon removals through regenerative practices. This implies a potential annual climate impact exceeding 1.35 million metric tons of CO2e reduced and 2.7 million metric tons of CO2e removed across the entire program.3

Agreena is developing a roadmap for integrating biodiversity and water outcome tracking into its MRV system, expanding the range of measurable environmental impacts.

Table 2: Objectives and progress monitored per impact area

Theme
Objective
Indicators
Progress to date
Climate
Reduce GHG emissions
Metric tons of CO2e – calculated using the Verra VM0042 methodology
17,819 metric tons of CO2e reduction; 39,391 tons of CO2e removed from atmosphere4
Biodiversity
Not currently tracked
n/a
n/a
Water
Not currently tracked
n/a
n/a
Soil health
Improve soil structure and biology
Hectares with cover cropping

UK: 13,900.86 hectares

Program-wide: 113,360 hectares

Soil health
Improve soil structure and biology
Hectares under no-till practices
UK: 25,510.21 hectares
Program-wide: 456,071 hectares
Socio-economic impact
Productivity – winter wheat (the most common crop type)
Average yield (metric tons) per hectare
8.44 metric tons per hectare in 2023, compared to the national average of 8.1

Despite strong progress, regenerative practices remain far from mainstream across the UK and wider Europe. Agreena’s advanced remote sensing capabilities enable country-level assessments of practice adoption, providing clear baselines and highlighting areas for accelerated impact. Even in relatively advanced markets like the UK, the adoption of practices such as cover cropping and no-till remains below 50% of arable land where these practices are agronomically applicable – underscoring the scale of the opportunity ahead.

Endnotes

1 One Planet Business for Biodiversity (OP2B) (2025). Shaping the Future of Farming: OP2B position paper on the vision for the future of agriculture in the EU. Retrieved from: https://www.wbcsd.org/resources/op2b-position-paper-on-the-vision-for-the-future-of-agriculture-in-the-eu/.

2 National Association of Agricultural Contractors (NAAC) (2023). Contracting Pricing Survey. Retrieved from: https://stmaaprodfwsite.blob.core.windows.net/assets/sites/1/2023/04/NAAC_Contracting_Prices_Survey_2023_Final-1.pdf.

3, 4 Note this is before the application of any buffer/deduction mechanisms.

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