Cost
$ 53.5 /tonne
CO2 Tonnes
Improved Agricultural Land Management - Europe
The Improved Agricultural Land Management project is Europe’s first multinational, certified carbon payment programme dedicated to regenerative agriculture. Operating across France, Belgium, and the UK, it empowers farmers to adopt practices that restore soil health, enhance biodiversity, and cut greenhouse gas emissions, while providing direct financial rewards through the sale of verified carbon credits. By combining robust agronomic support with measurable climate outcomes, the project proves that farming can be both environmentally regenerative and economically profitable, making it a scalable model for sustainable food production and rural resilience.
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Project information
Sustainable agricultural land management
The Improved Agricultural Land Management project operates in France, Belgium, and the UK, supporting farmers to adopt and maintain regenerative agriculture practices over a maximum 30-year duration. Participants commit to five-year crediting periods (renewable up to four times) followed by a 10-year retention period. The project addresses significant challenges of soil degradation, biodiversity loss, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions linked to intensive agriculture.
Regenerative practices promoted include reduced or zero tillage, diversification of crops, systematic use of cover crops, integration of livestock, and agroforestry. These measures rebuild soil organic carbon (SOC), enhance biodiversity, improve water retention, and reduce synthetic inputs, leading to measurable CO₂, CH₄, and N₂O emission reductions and removals.
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Intervention
Agricultural Land Management (ALM)
Location
France, Belgium, UK
Standard
GHG CleanProject Registry
Sustainable Goals
Project performance
The Earthly rating
The Earthly rating is the industry-first holistic project assessment. Earthly researchers analyse 106 data points, aggregating information across the three vital pillars of carbon, biodiversity and people. Projects in Earthly's marketplace all exceed a minimum score of 5/10.
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Carbon
315k
tonnes of CO2e reduced or removed during the 2023–2024
Biodiversity
195k
hectares of farmland across France, Belgium, and the UK
Social
>850
farmers enrolled receiving agronomic support
Project impact
Local impact
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Project area: through time
The project operates across regions where conventional farming systems still dominate agricultural landscapes. In France, approximately 88.7% of farms are classified as conventional, with 7.3% operating under organic systems and 4% practicing regenerative agriculture. Belgium shows a similar pattern, with 92.2% conventional, 6.8% organic, and only 1% regenerative farms. The UK has a slightly higher share of regenerative farms at 8%, alongside 88.7% conventional and 3.3% organic operations.
These figures highlight both the urgent need and significant opportunity for transitioning to farming systems that improve soil health, biodiversity, and climate resilience. By focusing on areas where regenerative agriculture remains a small fraction of total land use, the project aims to accelerate adoption, generate measurable environmental benefits, and demonstrate the economic viability of climate-positive practices in diverse agricultural contexts.
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Positive for people
The project addresses social issues in farming communities by combining technical, financial, and operational support to improve farmer livelihoods, resilience, and long-term security.
Farmers participating in the project receive expert agronomic advice tailored to their local conditions, helping them adopt regenerative practices in ways that sustain yields, lower production costs, and improve soil health. This technical support reduces the risk of poor management decisions during the transition period, which can otherwise threaten economic viability.
The project also creates a new income stream for farmers through the sale of verified emission reductions and removals, providing financial rewards for climate-positive farming and reducing the temptation to revert to conventional practices in times of economic stress.
By integrating regenerative agriculture into mainstream operations, the project aims to lower reliance on expensive synthetic inputs, freeing up resources for other farm and household needs.
Good for earth
By reducing or eliminating tillage, the project preserves soil structure, enhances microbial diversity, and protects habitats for soil fauna. Diversified crop rotations and intercropping mimic natural ecosystems, disrupting pest and disease cycles while providing a varied food supply for pollinators and wildlife. The systematic use of cover crops between cash crops ensures continuous living roots that feed soil biology year-round, reduce erosion, and sustain invertebrate and bird populations. Limited integration of livestock recycles nutrients naturally, stimulates plant growth through grazing, and creates a more dynamic farm ecosystem.
Agroforestry, with trees and perennial crops planted among arable fields, increases structural diversity, provides wildlife corridors, and sequesters carbon in woody biomass. At the same time, reducing synthetic pesticide and fertiliser use, and replacing them with organic inputs, limits chemical run-off, safeguards pollinators, and helps restore soil microbial communities.
The expected and observed impacts include richer communities of fungi, bacteria, earthworms, and beneficial insects that improve nutrient cycling and crop health, cleaner water from lower nutrient leaching and pesticide run-off, and new habitats and connectivity for species through more varied planting and tree cover. These changes also make farm ecosystems more resilient to climate stress, as soils with higher organic matter and diverse vegetation absorb and retain more water, buffering against droughts and floods.
In real time, participating farms are observing improved soil structure, more frequent sightings of pollinators and beneficial insects, and reduced erosion.
How we assess for quality
The Earthly scoring process
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