Participating organizations
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Context
In the East of England, which accounts for 15% of the country’s total land area, agriculture is a key driver of the local economy. Through the region’s intensive, high-value production systems, it delivers twice the national average in gross added value. Rich soils and important water resources, supporting diverse habitats and a growing urban population, are the main characteristics of the landscape. However, current land uses – including intensive farming and water abstraction – are rapidly depleting many of the resources upon which these activities depend. The area is at increasing risk of flooding, sea level rise and water scarcity, which has significant potential to impact business operations, livelihoods and well-being. There is an urgent need to regenerate the landscape in a way that balances productivity with long-term resilience.
of the country’s total land area is in the East of England
the national average in gross added value is delivered by the region
Key facts
Ambition of the project
There is an abundance of agricultural supply in the East of England and Yorkshire, with a large number of farms having the capability and willingness to adopt regenerative agriculture. However, achieving impact requires matching this supply with sustained, coordinated demand – a key objective of the Landscape Enterprise Networks (LENs). LENs structures annual trades that aggregate capital around shared landscape goals, reducing transaction costs and ensuring that individual investments contribute to system-level change. Each trade involves a group of buyers at one end – agrifood businesses, water companies, traders, millers and local governments – and a group of land management enterprises at the other.
LENs brings together businesses, public bodies, NGOs, farmers and land managers to finance and implement regenerative agriculture and nature-based solutions. The aim is to set up networks, including supply and demand partners, to work towards the shared goal of improving the health, productivity and resilience of the landscapes they all rely on. LENs’ activities primarily focus on ensuring resilient crop production, mitigating flood risk, improving water quality, reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and increasing biodiversity.
While each landscape presents its own context-specific challenges and opportunities, the core LENs approach – bringing together public and private sector demand for ecosystem services and enabling growers and land managers to deliver nature-based solutions – remains consistent. LENs operates three distinct landscape projects in the UK, as well as projects in Hungary, Italy and Poland, replicating the original model. This case study reflects the overall LENs approach, using the East of England and Yorkshire landscapes in the UK as examples.
The program at a glance
Demand parties engage through LENs to procure ecosystem services by financing the delivery or maintenance of regenerative practices on-farm. As LENs aims to support the transition of whole landscapes, its approach is not tied to a single crop but rather defined by the sourcing interests of demand partners in the region, the catchments feeding the water bodies demand partners rely on, and what farmers in the landscape are producing.
Farmers put forward practice and innovation proposals they wish to adopt on their farms through the LENs Application Tool. LENs collates and assesses their proposals against demand partner specifications.
Depending on the type of implementing practice and outcomes desired, farmers may pursue different types of funding:
LENs Regen Pathway measures:
1. Transition funding
based on payment per practice – available to farmers who are new or in the early stages of transitioning to regenerative agriculture;
2. Resilience funding
based on payment to achieve specific criteria – available to farmers who are mature in their transition to regenerative agriculture to reward existing practices and incentivize their continuation over time.
3. Targeted measures
focusing on crop-specific or location-specific activities that contribute to achieving those outcomes sought by a demand partner.
4. Innovation measures
designed to encourage farmer-led experimentation, trials and the adoption of novel practices or technologies not yet widely used or included in standard measures.
The funding supports both capital expenditures, such as the purchase of machinery and equipment, and operational expenditures, such as seeds and agricultural inputs
The Regen Pathway assesses farmer maturity in their transition to regenerative agriculture using seven key principles:
- Understanding the local context;
- Keeping soils covered;
- Maximizing plant and crop diversity;
- Minimizing soil disturbance;
- Reducing use of synthetic inputs;
- Creating and maintaining biodiversity habitats on farm;
- Integrating and managing livestock with arable systems (where relevant).
Once farmers accept a funding allocation, they will sign a contract to implement agreed measures and participate in LENs measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) activities.
A strong support system for farmers
Incentives for farmers to transition to regenerative agriculture exist, made available by financial actors, governments, and agribusinesses through their supply chains. Yet incentive schemes are often run in silos and have different requirements to monitor outcomes, creating a significant administrative burden for farmers. Farmers appreciate the accessible and flexible LENs model: across the landscape projects it operates, LENs had a 79% farmer retention rate year-on-year between 2023 and 2024.
“There is flexibility – more than with any other funding schemes we’ve been involved in. LENs is now more targeted and they know what people are looking for. The farmer innovation is brilliant. We really like that option.”
– Harry Fromant, East of England landscape
Financing model
LENs channels public and private capital through payments and technical assistance to landscape actors to support farmers in their transition and collaborative planning. Demand partners contribute to the LENs platform, with a target of 80% of all funding going to farmers.
Contributions come from a range of demand-side partners – agrifood brands, water utilities, local authorities, traders, millers, insurers and others – with agrifood businesses providing the majority of funding in the East of England and Yorkshire. The mechanism remains fully open to additional partners from every sector.
Across all LENs landscapes, approximately 80% of the funding flows directly to farmers and land managers in the landscape. The remaining 20% is allocated to service delivery, farmer education, technical assistance, network learning and the vital task of verifying the measures through MRV.
In 2024, East of England landscape funding invested in regenerative practices across 41 measure types and 115 individual innovations proposed by farmers.
of the funding flows directly to farmers and land managers
is allocated to service delivery, education, and technical assistance
individual innovations were proposed by farmers
Additionality to public incentives
Farmers can stack capital provided through LENs on top of public financing available through existing government incentives. In England, for instance, LENs funds can be an addition to mechanisms such as the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI). The SFI is a government incentive scheme that rewards farmers who produce food sustainably while protecting and enhancing nature – prioritizing actions to enhance soil health, create and manage hedgerows, adopt integrated pest management, manage crop nutrition and input use efficiently, and protect wildlife. At the time of writing, the SFI is on hold.
Where an equivalent publicly funded measure is available to farmers and specified in the defined list in the Farm Application Tool, farmers must prioritize the publicly funded measure first, enabling LENs funding to stretch further and unlocking activities that it would not otherwise support.
Double funding is not permitted, meaning that the demand parties cannot fund measures on a parcel of land where other mechanisms are already funding those same measures. However, LENs funding can be in addition to funding through other schemes to support measures on the same parcel of land. The LENs application tool indicates which SFI equivalent actions are available to farmers and would count towards validating Regen Pathway criteria.
Measurement, reporting and verification
LENs has developed a robust MRV system that provides farmers with an overview of their farm’s resilience and allows them to become eligible for new markets. At the same time, it enables demand partners to make evidence-based sustainability claims. Its MRV system aligns with international standards including the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHGP) Land Sector and Removals Guidance (LSRG), the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) and the SAI Platform Regenerating Together Program. Demand partners may communicate Scope 3 emission reductions and removals, as well as contribution claims proportionate to the amount of their financial contribution to LENs.
The LENs MRV system uses a common base package of metrics and common measurement and modeling tools across all LENs farms. It consists of two key activities:
Verification of delivery – to ensure the correct implementation of measures funded through LENs;
Outcome measurement – to assess environmental outcomes achieved by the measures funded.
LENs calculates impact through the annual monitoring of progress against the baseline assessment of soil carbon stocks in their fields when they joined LENs; third-party auditors verify all data. At the time of writing, LENs is trialing the use of remote sensing to verify data.
Along with the MRV system focusing on delivery and outcomes, LENs also monitors the number of farmers who are women, the ratio of farm ownership (as opposed to tenancy) and the farm size to better understand the realities and challenges of the farmers it engages and to tailor its offer to their needs. Measurement of socio-economic outcomes will be added to the 2025 MRV campaign.
In June 2025 LENs published its first impact report in June, covering all landscapes including East of England, Yorkshire, Hungary, Italy and Poland. Across the landscapes where it operates, LENs has disbursed EUR
to farmers (since 2021) and funded practices on
hectares in 2024 alone, sequestering
metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent
Table 2: Objectives and progress monitored per impact area
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.
