The year 2024 was a tough one for the carbon credit industry. Every week seemed to bring reports of a new scandal.[1] BBC investigations into carbon credit projects run by US wildlife conservation groups unearthed sexual violence in Kenya and wildly inflated claims of reduced deforestation in Cambodia.[2] The Washington Post exposed carbon credit developers in Brazil for illegally grabbing over 20 million hectares of public lands and German broadcaster ZDF uncovered what it called "one of the largest cases of fraud in the German petroleum industry" in which oil companies were using carbon projects in China that "only exist on paper" to meet their emissions targets.[3]Perhaps the most embarrassing scandal for the industry was when one of its leading lights, Ken Newcombe, the former CEO of carbon credit project developer C-Quest Capital LLC, was indicted on fraud charges by an office of the US Attorney General over allegations of issuing millions of bogus carbon credits from a cookstove project in Malawi.[4]The year 2025 could be even worse. Shell is under fire for using "phantom credits" generated by rice projects in China to label its natural gas "carbon neutral" and a Kenyan court has ruled that conservation areas used to sell carbon credits to Meta, Netflix and British Airways have no basis in law.[5] Meanwhile a carbon offset developer that sold credits to Hollywood stars and US billionaires under the motto “Clean rich is the new filthy rich” is now under investigation by the US Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission.[6]This litany of scandals has yet to kill corporate interest in carbon credits. In some quarters, that interest has only grown bigger. Since many of the scandals are with carbon offset projects based on “avoided emissions” (like rainforest protection), a lot of companies have pivoted to projects that claim to remove carbon and sequester it in soils or trees. In 2024, GRAIN documented how this is driving a new rush to grab lands for projects where trees and other crops are planted to produce carbon credits.[7] Between 2016 and 2024, over 9 million hectares of lands have been seized for these projects. The vast majority of these are in the global South, and many of them have been linked to scandals and harms to local communities.[8]Now the flood gates are cracking open for another type of carbon credit project, dubbed "carbon farming". These projects claim to sequester carbon in soils by getting farmers to implement practices such as no-till farming or cover crop rotations that are said to increase soil organic carbon. Efforts to develop these projects go back at least a decade, but the market for carbon farming credits has been slow to take off.[9] At the end of 2022, only 0.02% of the 1.7 billion credits issued in voluntary carbon markets were from carbon farming projects.[10] But, under the leadership of powerful corporations in the food system, this looks likely to change.On shaky groundThere are dozens of companies now enrolling farmers in such carbon farming schemes. Most of them target the large-scale farms of North America, Europe and Brazil, although there are some initiatives that focus on smaller farms, such as the one run by Dutch NGO Solidaridad that enlists small farmers in the global South producing cotton, cacao and other commodity crops for corporations.[11] (See Table below: Corporate carbon farming schemes)Corporate carbon farming schemesCarbon farming programmeOwnerAgribusiness/food partnersArea ('000 ha)CountriesAgreenaAgreena (Denmark)SALIC, Al Dahra, Mars4,500EuropeIndigoAg and CIBOFlagship Pioneering (US)Land O'Lakes/Truterra, Inari2,830USRe:generations and GradableADM (US)Farmers Business Network, Bayer, JM Smucker, Mars2,800US, Europe, India, BrazilAgoro Carbon AllianceYara (Norway)PepsiCo, Minerva1,000US, Europe, India, BrazilKlimKlim (Germany)Rabobank, Nestlé700EuropeCarbon InitiativeBayer (US)ADM, Viterra610US, Brazil, EuropeRegenConnect, ReSolu, SustainConnect, SRISHTICargill (US)Mars, Nestlé, John Deere, Mosaic510US, Canada, Europe, Brazil, Australia, IndiaRegenagriSolidaridad Network (Netherlands)Olam Agri353US, Brazil, India, Turkey, Côte d'Ivoire, PakistanMyCarbonMinerva (Brazil)SALIC, Brandt, Yara40BrazilSource: Compiled by GRAIN from company statements and reportsMost of the carbon farming schemes are either run by agribusiness and food corporations, or have significant partnerships with them. For seed, fertiliser and pesticide companies, like Yara or Bayer, the schemes are a way to lure farmers onto their digital platforms where they can encourage them to buy more of their products.[12] Food companies like Cargill, ADM and Mars see carbon farming as a way to deal with the bloated emissions in their supply chains, known as "Scope 3" emissions. Through these schemes they can quantify the amount of carbon that farmers are sequestering in their soils and claim it against their Scope 3 emissions. Corporations call these "insets" to differentiate them from carbon credits produced outside of their supply chains.Corporations are rushing head long into carbon farming while the science underpinning it is controversial and contested.[13] This starts with its most basic assumption: that a tonne of carbon drawn from the atmosphere and converted into soil organic carbon is equivalent to a tonne of carbon released into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels, or in other words, that a tonne of "sequestered" carbon cancels out a tonne of emissions. This is false. A tonne of fossil fuels left in the ground is easily quantifiable and permanent, while a tonne of carbon sequestered in farmland is hard to accurately measure and highly volatile, particularly in a world of climate chaos.A scientific article published in Nature in November 2024 states that carbon sequestration projects would need to store carbon for at least 1000 years to effectively "neutralise" emissions from fossil fuels.[14] But today's corporate carbon farming schemes only require guarantees of a maximum of 40 years, with many requiring 10 years or less.[15]Scientists also point out that soil has a carbon saturation rate. There's a limit to how much carbon can be added to the soil, and the rate at which it can be added decreases as the limit is reached. A farm's so-called "net emissions" (emissions minus removals) might be said to decrease during the period of a carbon farming project, but go back up when the farm starts approaching the saturation rate, something which carbon farming schemes do not account for. Indeed, when saturation rates are taken into consideration, scientists estimate that removals from carbon farming would account for as little as 1% of annual global greenhouse gas emissions.[16] This is just a paltry blip in the massive overall emissions from the food system, which account for over a third of annual global greenhouse gas emissions.[17]Despite this controversy, carbon credit certifiers have embraced carbon farming and are racing to develop standards and certification protocols. Top certification companies, like Gold Standard and Verra, now have carbon farming standards in place and international protocols for insetting within supply chains.[18]Taking all the creditIn January 2025, Denmark's Agreena became the first "large-scale agricultural cropland project" to be registered under Verra’s new carbon farming methodology. “This is a pivotal moment for the regenerative agriculture movement and steering much-needed carbon finance to farmers,” said Agreena CEO, Simon Haldrup.[19]But the "farmers" that work with Haldrup's company can hardly be described as needing carbon finance. Agreena works primarily with large-scale farms in Europe, and nearly half of the farmlands under its certified project are owned by sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.[20]Saudi Arabia's gigantic sovereign wealth fund, Public Investment Fund (PIF), which also owns a big chunk of the national oil company, Saudi Aramco, controls around 200,000 hectares of farmland in Ukraine through its food and agriculture division, SALIC. It says that it has enrolled 156,000 ha in Agreena's Verra-certified carbon farming project.[21] Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund, ADQ, also deeply tied up with oil and gas, recently acquired a 55,000 ha farm in Romania, reportedly the biggest farm in Europe.[22] This farm is part of Agreena's carbon farming project, too.[23]SALIC is also pursuing carbon credits from cattle farming in Brazil. Its subsidiary, Minerva, one of the largest meat producers in the world and notorious for its links to deforestation and land grabbing in the Amazon, recently launched a carbon farming scheme called MyCarbon that produces carbon credits by increasing carbon in the soil of degraded pastures.[24] Among its partners are the Norwegian fertiliser giant Yara, which will get participating farmers to start applying chemical fertilisers on pastures (something rarely done in Brazil), and the US pesticide company Brandt, which will sell its new line of biological pesticides through the programme.[25]Minerva, which markets its exported beef as "carbon neutral", has already started selling carbon credits from its programmes on Saudi Arabia's voluntary carbon market (also owned by PIF) and Dubai's new carbon exchange.[26] Most of the credits have so far been purchased by Saudi Aramco.[27]This is just the tip of the iceberg for Saudi Arabia and Brazil. At around the same time that Saudi Aramco was buying up Minerva's carbon credits, the Brazilian and Saudi governments started negotiations for a US$120 billion plan, known as PNCPD, that will "recover and convert" 40 million hectares of pastures and double Brazil's food production.[28] This massive carbon farming scheme, in which SALIC is the lead private sector actor, is to be funded through a mix of carbon credits, loans and foreign investment. Out of the deal, Saudi Arabia will get more beef and carbon offsets for its oil companies, while Brazil will get the funds to ramp up export production of beef and other agricultural commodities. For the climate, the massive conversion of pasture lands to plantations of soybeans and other crops means only more emissions and more deforestation.[29]Minerva is already putting the plan into motion. Through a partnership with Banco do Brasil and two leading digital agriculture companies, Minerva's MyCarbon is rolling out a PNCPD programme that provides cheap loans to beef farmers to "modernise" their ranches and generate carbon credits.[30]Minerva celebrates the export of boxes of beef labelled “carbon neutral” from its processing plant in Uruguay to Israel, November 2023.Hot air won't cool the planetMore beef, fertilisers and pesticides are not going to get us out of the climate crisis, and especially not when they greenwash more fossil fuels and processed foods. Carbon farming is advertised as a way to reduce emissions in the food system, but in reality it is being used by Minerva and other corporations as an alternative to doing so.This is most obvious when carbon farming credits are used to offset the fossil fuel emissions of companies like Saudi Aramco, but it applies equally to the "insetting" programmes that many food corporations are pursuing. Insets are a way for companies with overlapping supply chains to come together, share costs and jointly claim Scope 3 emissions reductions. That's why there are so many carbon farming collaborations sprouting up between grain companies, like ADM and Cargill, and food processors, like PepsiCo and Nestlé. The schemes are often described as "regenerative agriculture" and are said to be concerned, not only with sequestering carbon, but also with reducing emissions and other impacts that industrial farming has on the environment. (See Box: Tomato, tomahto?)Yet, in practice, the industry acknowledges that these programmes are mostly about short-term carbon "removals" (i.e. sequestering carbon in the soil).[31] The reason is that sequestering carbon can be claimed as a result of some minor changes to production, such as spraying fields with glyphosate (RoundUp) instead of ploughing or planting cover crops in rotation. Eliminating or significantly reducing emissions, on the other hand, requires phasing out most chemical inputs and reorganising production towards local markets, nutritious foods and a moderate consumption of meat and dairy -- things that none of the large food corporations are willing or even able to contemplate.One should not be fooled that corporations are pursuing carbon farming schemes, in the words of Agreena's CEO, to "steer much-needed carbon finance to farmers". A study of carbon farming schemes in Haryana and Madhya Pradesh, in India, found that the schemes excluded women farmers and farmers from marginalised castes. But those excluded may have been lucky. Of the larger farmer participants, 99% of them received no monetary benefits from carbon credits and many said their yields had gone down. Not surprisingly, over a quarter of the farmers dropped out of the schemes after the second year.[32]The impacts of the climate crisis on the global food system are massive. We need to do be doing everything we can to both slash emissions in the food system and restore fertility to soils, and we need to do this while reorganising food production and distribution to cope with the increasingly severe disruptions caused by climate change. There are many examples from around the world of initiatives people are taking in this direction.[33] But in the carbon farming schemes that corporations are trying to peddle as climate solutions, we see yet another example of how woefully inept they are at addressing this challenge and how we urgently need to take down their power in the food system.Tomato, tomahto?There is fierce pushback against corporations trying to use carbon credits as part of their emissions reduction targets. Even the main corporate standard-setting body, the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), still refuses to allow corporations to use carbon credits for the purpose of offsetting their emissions, despite tremendous pressure from corporate lobbies.[34] The reasons, as SBTi recognises, are that carbon credits cannot be considered equivalent to emissions reductions (for a whole range of scientific and practical reasons) and that they are likely to be used by corporations to delay or avoid actual reductions.[35] This means that a company like Microsoft should not be able to get an SBTi stamp of approval for its "net zero" plan if it includes buying carbon credits from tree plantation projects in Kenya to offset emissions from its data centres.Curiously, the SBTi makes an exception for carbon credits that are produced within a company's supply chain in the agriculture sector and that are only used to offset the company's supply chain (Scope 3) emissions.[36] These offsets are often called "insets" and are mainly generated through carbon farming schemes that claim to sequester carbon in the soil. So, for example, Nestlé can offset the emissions generated by farms producing wheat for its biscuits with the "insets" these farms (and other farms) generate through Nestlé-sponsored carbon farming programmes. SBTi argues that these insets "should not be confused with offsets" because they can only be used by food companies to realise their emissions reduction targets within their supply chains.But Nestlé's insets from carbon farming raise the same issues as Microsoft's offsets from planting trees. Both are based on a false equivalence between removals and emissions, and both are clearly being used by companies as an alternative to genuine emissions reductions. No matter what you call it-- insetting or offsetting-- it's still just a mechanism to allow companies to substitute fabricated carbon credits for real cuts to emissions.Indeed, Nestlé and other members of the inset lobby are now pushing for insetting standards that would allow companies to use carbon credits from outside of their supply chains (like tree planting in Kenya) to offset up to half of their supply chain emissions, when insets alone are not enough.[37] Banner photo: In the Mato Grosso Cerrado, forest is cut and burned to make way for pastureland for the cattle that supply Brazil’s big meatpackers. Photo: CESAR DINIZ via Sumauma [1]See the excellent archives by REDD-Monitor from a comprehensive account: https://reddmonitor.substack.com/[2]"Big brands green claims uncovered," BBC Panorama, May 2024: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001zd68[3]Terrence McCoy, "How ‘carbon cowboys’ are cashing in on protected Amazon forest," Washington Post, July 2024: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2024/brazil-amazon-carbon-credit-offsets/; "Betrugsverdacht bei Klimaschutzprojekten," ZDF, May 2024: https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/wirtschaft/unternehmen/shell-rosneft-omv-betrug-verdacht-klimaschutz-100.html[4]Patrick Greenfield, "Ex-carbon offsetting boss charged in New York with multimillion-dollar fraud," The Guardian, October 2024: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/04/ex-carbon-offsetting-boss-kenneth-newcombe-charged-in-new-york-with-multimillion-dollar[5]Beth Newhart, "Shell faces backlash after local farmers counter claims about controversial campaign: 'We really cannot trust the industry'", TCD, January 2025: https://www.thecooldown.com/green-business/shell-lng-carbon-neutral-liquid-natural-gas-promotion/; "Kenya: Landmark court ruling delivers devastating blow to flagship carbon offset project," Survival International, January 2025: https://survivalinternational.org/news/14121[6]Chris Lang, "Aspiration is under investigation by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission about the quality of its carbon offsets", REDD-Monitor, January 2025: https://reddmonitor.substack.com/p/aspiration-is-under-investigation[7]World Rainforest Movement, "A new destructive business: Carbon credits from tree plantations," June 2024: https://www.wrm.org.uy/bulletins/issue-270[8]GRAIN, "From land grabbers to carbon cowboys: a new scramble for community lands takes off," September 2024: https://grain.org/e/7190[9]GRAIN, "From land grab to soil grab - the new business of carbon farming," February 2022: https://grain.org/e/6804[10]Estimate is from BloombergNEF: https://about.bnef.com/blog/unlocking-agricultural-carbon-market-opportunities/[11]Although it is not mentioned on their website (https://regenagri.org/), according to the UK company registry regenagri is wholly owned by Solidaridad. There are also many controversial carbon credit schemes targeting methane emissions from small rice farms in Asia that focus on reducing emissions, not sequestering carbon. See GRAIN, "Carbon rice farming: A license to pollute at the expense of small farmers," July 2023:https://grain.org/e/7009[12]GRAIN, "From land grab to soil grab - the new business of carbon farming," February 2022: https://grain.org/e/6804[13]FOE International, "Nature based solutions: The risks of soil carbon markets," July 2023: https://www.foei.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/FoEI-NBS-factsheet3.pdf[14]Cyril Brunner et al. "Durability of carbon dioxide removal is critical for Paris climate goals," Communications Earth & Environment volume 5, Article number: 645, 2024: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01808-7?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email[15]The voluntary carbon credit registry Verra requires 40 years: https://verra.org/program-notice/reminder-new-vcs-program-rules-and-requirements-related-to-afolu-non-permanence-risk-tool-effective-january-1-2024/ . For a more detailed discussion see GRAIN, "From land grab to soil grab - the new business of carbon farming," February 2022: https://grain.org/e/6804[16]Muhammad Junaid Nazir et al. Harnessing soil carbon sequestration to address climate change challenges in agriculture, Soil & Tillage Research 237, 2024: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.still.2023.105959; https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016706122001173?pes=vor&utm_source=wiley&getft_integrator=wiley; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.16570[17]GRAIN, "New poster on food and the climate crisis," April 2024: https://grain.org/en/article/7128-new-poster-on-food-and-the-climate-crisis[18]See, for example, Gold Standard's documentation: https://globalgoals.goldstandard.org/documents/methodology/15-agriculture/ and https://www.goldstandard.org/publications/scope-3-value-chain-interventions-guidance[19]"Agreena achieves Verra registration landmark for soil carbon market," Agreena, January 2025: https://agreena.com/news/press-release-agreena-achieves-verra-registration-landmark-for-soil-carbon-market/[20]See the project description document on the Verra Registry: https://registry.verra.org/app/projectDetail/VCS/4022[21]"Amid war, Ukrainian firm readies to sell first soil credits," QCI, July 2023: https://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/31671-amid-war-ukrainian-firm-readies-to-sell-first-soil-credits[22]For more on Al Dahra and the ADQ's involvement in agriculture, see GRAIN, "From land to logistics: UAE's growing power in the global food system," July 2024: https://grain.org/e/7170[23]"Al Dahra and Agreena announce carbon farming project on the EU’s largest arable farm at COP28," Agreena, December 2023: https://agreena.com/news/al-dahra-partnership/[24]SALIC owns 32% of Minerva. For details on Minerva's involvement in deforestation and land grabbing see, Bruna Bronoski, "Segundo maior frigorífico brasileiro lucra na Bolsa com lavagem de gado, desmatamento ilegal e pressão sobre terra indígena," O Joio e o Trigo, January 2025: https://ojoioeotrigo.com.br/2025/01/segundo-maior-frigorifico-brasileiro-lucra-na-bolsa-com-lavagem-de-gado-desmatamento-ilegal-e-pressao-sobre-terra-indigena/[25]Alassandra Mello, "Yara fecha parceria com My Carbon, da Minerva," AgFeed, April 2024: https://agfeed.com.br/esg/yara-fecha-parceria-com-my-carbon-da-minerva-para-recuperar-areas-degradadas/#; "BRANDT, MyCarbon launch ‘Revitalis’ program to boost regenerative and sustainable agriculture in Brazil," AgriculturePost, July 2024: https://agriculturepost.com/international/brazil/brandt-mycarbon-launch-revitalis-program-to-boost-regenerative-and-sustainable-agriculture-in-brazil/[26]"Minerva Foods exported the first batch of carbon-neutral meat to US," euromeat, November 2024: https://www.euromeatnews.com/Article-Minerva-Foods-exported-the-first-batch-of-carbon-neutral-meat-to-US/5873[27]"Saudi Aramco Buys Carbon Credits At Largest-Ever Auction," OilPrice, January 2023: https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Saudi-Aramco-Buys-Carbon-Credits-At-Largest-Ever-Auction.html[28]Programa Nacional de Conversão de Pastagens Degradadas em Sistemas de Produção Agropecuários e Florestais Sustentáveis (PNCPD). See ANBA, "Saudi Arabia to partner up with Brazil to rebuild pastures," July 2023: https://anba.com.br/en/saudi-arabia-to-partner-up-with-brazil-to-rebuild-pastures/[29]For more on this see, GRAIN, "Whipping up disaster: how Brazil became a lab for financial agro-investments," May 2024: https://grain.org/e/7138[30]"Banco do Brasil partners with startups to modernize beef cattle farming," Planeta Campo, January 2024: https://planetacampo.canalrural.com.br/pecuaria/banco-do-brasil-parceria-moderniza-pecuaria/[31]Industry's own International Platform for Insetting states that "most climate benefits from insetting constitute so-called removals, i.e. CO2 that is sequestered in biomass or as soil organic matter." https://www.insettingplatform.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/IPI-Insetting-Guide.pdf[32]Adeeth Cariappa et al., "Carbon farming in India: are the existing projects inclusive, additional, and permanent?", Climate Policy, October 2024: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14693062.2024.2416497#d1e422[33]GRAIN, "New poster on food and the climate crisis," April 2024: https://grain.org/en/article/7128-new-poster-on-food-and-the-climate-crisis[34]Chris Lang, "'Various types of carbon credits are ineffective,' says the Science Based Targets initiative", REDD-Monitor, July 2024: https://reddmonitor.substack.com/p/various-types-of-carbon-credits-are[35]Joint Statement, "Why carbon offsetting undermines climate targets", July 2024: https://newclimate.org/sites/default/files/2024-07/Joint-CSO-Statement-Offsetting.pdf[36]SBTi, "Carbon removals in Forest, Land and Agriculture (FLAG) Pathways", September 2022: https://sciencebasedtargets.org/blog/carbon-removals-in-forest-land-and-agriculture-flag-pathways[37]According to the International Platform for Insetting's Insetting Programme Standard: "“In case the Insetting Projects cannot cover the full mitigation of the GHG Footprint of the organization, the organization has the right to purchase offsetting credits to cover up the gap. They must be certified under a recognized standard (VCS, Gold Standard, Plan Vivo, Solidarity Reforestation). The proportion of insets vs. offsets must represent at minimum 50% of the GHG footprint of the organization, for the organization to claim to be Insetted." https://www.insettingplatform.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/INSETTING_PROGRAM_STANDARD_IPS_V2.0_Final.pdf