Scope 3 Agriculture Insetting in Agri-Food Value Chains

Addressing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the agri-food supply chain requires a granular understanding of their origin within the value chain. The internationally recognized Greenhouse Gas Protocol provides the necessary framework by categorizing emissions into three scopes, which clarifies accountability from farm to final product.

Scope 1: Direct Emissions. These are emissions from sources directly owned or controlled by the agricultural enterprise. This includes emissions from buildings and facilities (e.g., heating systems, generators) or from vehicles used for agricultural operations that belong to the farm business.

Scope 2: Indirect Emissions from Purchased Energy. This scope encompasses emissions from indirect energy sources, such as purchased electricity, steam, heating, or cooling.

Scope 3: Other Indirect Emissions. These are also a consequence of the business’s activity, but the agricultural enterprise has no direct control over them. Examples include emissions from procured products like farm inputs or emissions related to the distribution of grains. Managing scope 3 agriculture effectively requires collaboration across suppliers, processors, and distributors to track and reduce upstream and downstream GHG impacts.

The Insetting Strategy: A Value Chain-Centric Approach

Agricultural insetting is a company’s investment in climate actions on farms within its own supply chain, such as regenerative practices or agroforestry, to reduce or remove Scope 3 emissions. Unlike offsetting, the resulting reductions are claimed in the company’s own inventory rather than sold as carbon credits on an external market.

For many agri-food corporations, a significant portion of their agri-food supply chain emissions originate in Scope 3, specifically from the agricultural production stage. This has led to the adoption of insetting projects as a core corporate solution.

The Insetting Program Standard (IPS) defines insetting as “actions undertaken by an organization to combat climate change within its own value chain in a manner that generates multiple sustainable positive impacts.” These insetting projects aim to reduce GHG emissions and increase carbon sequestration through nature-based climate solutions, typically involving regenerative agriculture and agroforestry programs at the local level.

An insetting strategy creates positive impacts for communities, landscapes, and ecosystems. The environmental benefits include:

• Carbon sequestration
• Reduction of GHG emissions
• Protection of biodiversity
• Conservation of natural resources
• Improvement of water and soil quality
• Strengthening of climate resilience
• Increased agricultural productivity
• Improvement of livelihoods and the lives of local communities

For the businesses involved, these projects help achieve climate targets, transform business models toward greater sustainability, and create a more resilient environment throughout their value chain, thereby ensuring long-term stability and quality of supply. Moreover, insetting applies exclusively to an organization’s scope 3 agriculture emissions. To be credible, these projects must also be scientifically sound and conform to the guidelines of the Insetting Program Standard, which was developed by the International Platform for Insetting (IPI).

Insetting in Practice: Corporate Case Studies

Cargill: The company’s BeefUp Sustainability initiative aims to reduce GHG emissions per kilogram of meat produced by 30% by 2030. To achieve this, the program involves projects in pasture management, animal feed production, and food waste reduction. Additionally, Cargill engages in forest protection within its supply chains to reduce emissions from land-use change, such as planting shade trees in cocoa plantations in Côte d’Ivoire and financing a community forest project in Indonesia.

Nespresso: As a concrete example of a successful insetting project, Nespresso implemented programs to plant trees in coffee-growing areas to increase carbon sequestration. As a result, this agroforestry-based nature-based climate solution has increased farm resilience to climate change while improving soil fertility, biodiversity, and water conservation. Between 2014 and 2020, Nespresso planted nearly 3.5 million trees over a total area of 7,364 ha, representing a sequestration of 770,200 t CO₂ eq. In total, nearly 13,000 coffee producers benefited from this program through diversified income (e.g., from fruit trees), training, and other support.

Organic Valley: This cooperative of organic dairy farmers pays its producers the market price for carbon for implementing low-carbon projects like solar energy, manure composting, and agroforestry. Moreover, the cooperative incentivizes producers to sell their carbon credits internally by providing technical assistance, training, and grant-writing help — support that is not available on the open carbon market.

Nestlé: Citing a lack of standards for execution and evaluation, as well as unclear carbon accounting rules, Nestlé developed its own insetting framework in 2021. To address these gaps, the company works with organizations like the IPI and follows guidance from the GHG Protocol and SBTi. Furthermore, Nestlé’s risk-based framework identifies credible and permanent nature-based climate solutions across four zones: on-farm, at the farm’s “supply shed” scale, in the landscape adjacent to a farm or supply shed, and in landscapes not adjacent to them. The framework also specifies project types, monitoring frequency, and verification levels for each zone.

How Food Companies Measure Soil Carbon for Scope 3 Insetting

An insetting claim is only as strong as the data behind it. For soil carbon, that means measuring what is actually stored in the fields that supply the company, not only modelling it. A credible measurement program follows five steps:

1. Define the boundary. Identify the farms or supply shed the company sources from, and document how products are traced back to that land.
2. Set a measured baseline. Measure soil organic carbon stocks before practices change, using a stratified sampling design, a consistent depth and bulk density, so stocks can be compared over time.
3. Re-measure over time. Soil carbon changes slowly. Removals reported in an inventory need ongoing monitoring that the carbon remains stored.
4. Combine measurement and models. Models extend results across many farms, but they need local field data to calibrate them and to keep uncertainty under control.
5. Quantify uncertainty and get it verified. Report results with their uncertainty and have them reviewed by an independent third party before making a public claim.

For a deeper comparison of measurement methods (laboratory analysis, proximal sensing, remote sensing and modelling), see our guide to soil carbon measurement methods.

Verifying Field-Level Results in a Grain Supply Chain

Grain is hard to trace: harvests from many farms are mixed at the elevator, so a company rarely knows which field its wheat or corn came from. Two accounting levels are used:

• Supply shed level: results are averaged across a group of suppliers in the same sourcing region. This is practical when products are commingled, but it is less precise.
• Field level: results come from the specific fields enrolled in the program. This gives the strongest evidence, and it requires direct soil data from those fields.

In both cases, verification relies on the same evidence: georeferenced sampling points, a documented chain from field data to final number, and repeat measurements at the same locations.

What Changes in 2027: The GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Standard

The GHG Protocol published its Land Sector and Removals Standard on January 30, 2026. It takes effect on January 1, 2027, and version 1.0 applies to agriculture and CO₂ removal technologies, not forestry.

For agri-food companies, it raises expectations on traceability, on the quality of land-sector data and on how removals are reported. Insetting programs that rely only on generic emission factors or unverified models will find it harder to justify their claims. Programs built on measured, traceable soil data are better prepared.

Managing the Risks of Insetting

For an insetting program to be credible, it must be managed or certified by a standard and adhere to key principles. The Gold Standard participated in creating accounting guidance for value chain interventions. This guidance introduces the “supply shed” concept, which represents a group of suppliers in the same geographic area providing similar goods. This is particularly useful for industries like grains, where the mixing of products makes it difficult to trace a specific supply back to its corresponding farm.

While practical, this concept is not without risks, primarily double counting and double claiming.

Double Counting

Double counting occurs when two organizations claim the same emissions reduction in their respective GHG inventories.

• Acceptable: It is standard for a supplier’s Scope 1/2/3 emissions to be included in the Scope 3 emissions of other companies in the value chain. It is also acceptable for those emissions to appear simultaneously in national and corporate inventories.
• To Be Mitigated: A risk arises when one company invests in a Scope 3 agriculture improvement within its supply shed and claims the reductions, while another company buys the resulting “improved” product and claims the same reductions. A robust and transparent accounting system is required to prevent this.
• To Be Avoided: A company must not claim reductions from a project in its inventory and also issue offset credits from the same reductions on a carbon market.

Double Claiming

A risk of double claiming exists between a company’s inventory and carbon credits used for offsetting. An offset credit must have unique ownership and should not be issued from emission reductions already claimed in a company’s inventory. To make a claim, a company must demonstrate its contribution to the reduction through:

• Direct financial investment (e.g., financing new equipment)
• Recognized contributions within a partnership
• Incentives for reduction (e.g., favoring suppliers with improved practices)
• Establishing specific procurement requirements

Insetting vs. Offsetting: A Comparative Analysis

The fundamental difference between the two concepts is that with insetting, the producer sells their improved products and the associated GHG reductions to their client within the value chain. With offsetting, the reductions are sold outside the value chain on a carbon market, while the improved products are sold to the producer’s client.

Both concepts share the challenge of agri-food supply chain emissions traceability, as products are transformed and divided as they move through the value chain.

For the grain sector, an insetting strategy, particularly one led by end customers in the supply chain can be highly beneficial. Success requires a proper evaluation of project suitability and a thorough risk analysis with mitigation measures. It also demands solid, credible accounting and reporting systems to ensure transparency and avoid greenwashing.

How ChrysaLabs Supports Scope 3 Insetting Programs

ChrysaLabs provides the measured soil carbon data that insetting claims depend on. Our direct-contact proximal sensing probes measure soil organic carbon in the field, at variable depths down to one meter, and feed a traceable data pipeline from each sampling point to the final number.

• Independently validated: the first direct-contact proximal sensing technology validated by Bureau Veritas for use under Verra’s VM0042. Read about the validation.
• Primary field data: soil carbon measured directly in supplier fields, giving sustainability teams primary data they can defend to auditors, regulators, and buyers.
• Proven at scale: 5 million acres measured and 400,000 ground-truth data points across 10+ countries.

See how we work with food and beverage companies on our Scope 3 solutions page, or talk to our team about your insetting program.

Frequently asked questions

What is agricultural insetting?

Agricultural insetting is a company’s investment in climate actions on farms within its own supply chain, such as regenerative practices or agroforestry. The resulting reductions and removals are counted in the company’s own Scope 3 inventory instead of being sold as carbon credits.

What are Scope 3 emissions in agriculture?

For a food or beverage company, Scope 3 agricultural emissions are the upstream emissions from growing the crops and raising the livestock it buys: fertilizer use, soil carbon losses, enteric methane and land-use change. They often make up the largest share of an agri-food company’s footprint.

What is the difference between insetting and offsetting?

Insetting finances reductions inside a company’s own value chain and counts them in its Scope 3 inventory. Offsetting buys carbon credits from projects outside the value chain to compensate for emissions.

How do food companies measure soil carbon for insetting?

They set a measured baseline of soil organic carbon stocks in the fields or supply shed they source from, re-measure at the same locations over time, use models calibrated on that field data to scale results, and have the results independently verified.

How can a food company verify field-level carbon results in a grain supply chain?

By using georeferenced sampling points on enrolled fields, repeat measurements at the same locations, a documented chain from field data to final number, and independent third-party review. Where grain is commingled, results are aggregated at the supply shed level.

How do you avoid double counting in insetting?

Through clear contractual ownership of each reduction, supply-shed accounting, and a firm rule that reductions claimed in an inventory are never also sold as offset credits.

When does the GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Standard apply?

It was published on January 30, 2026 and takes effect on January 1, 2027. Version 1.0 covers agriculture and CO₂ removal technologies.

Related reading

• Soil Carbon Measurement: Methods, Challenges, and What Actually Works
• ChrysaLabs validated by Bureau Veritas for use under Verra’s VM0042
• The Role of Emerging Technologies in Soil Carbon MRV
• On the Role of Carbon Offsetting: A Framework for Credible Climate Action
• Navigating the Agricultural Carbon Market: A Guide to Standards and Programs