Regenerative agriculture: what it is and how it cuts farming's carbon footprint

Regenerative agriculture is a set of agronomic practices aimed at restoring soil health, increasing biodiversity and improving the water cycle while producing food. Unlike a model that merely aims to "do no harm", it seeks to leave the ecosystem in a better state than it started, and one of its most relevant consequences for the climate is its ability to reduce farming's carbon footprint and capture carbon in the soil.

In short: by keeping the soil covered, minimising its disturbance and increasing organic-matter inputs, regenerative agriculture cuts certain emissions and favours carbon storage in the form of soil organic matter.

What regenerative agriculture is

There is no single regulatory definition, but there is broad consensus on its principles: minimise soil disturbance, keep it permanently covered, maximise crop diversity, keep living roots year-round and integrate livestock where possible. The result is a more fertile soil with greater infiltration capacity, which brings resilience against droughts and floods and strengthens the farm's natural capital.

Main practices

The most common regenerative techniques are:

• Minimum tillage or no-till: reducing or eliminating ploughing avoids releasing soil-stored carbon into the atmosphere and protects soil structure.
• Cover crops: sowing species that are not harvested (legumes, grasses, brassicas) protects the soil, provides living roots and adds carbon to the profile.
• Rotations and polycultures: alternating and diversifying crops improves fertility, breaks pest cycles and reduces reliance on inputs.
• Livestock integration: well-managed grazing recycles nutrients and stimulates plant growth.
• Organic-matter inputs: compost, manure or crop residues feed soil life.

Each practice influences the climate through a different mechanism, worth keeping clear so as not to confuse emission reduction with carbon sequestration:

How it cuts the carbon footprint and sequesters carbon

Regenerative agriculture acts on the climate through two complementary routes. The first is emission reduction: less tillage means less fuel use on the farm, and a tighter use of nitrogen fertilisers reduces nitrous-oxide emissions, a very potent greenhouse gas. The second is carbon sequestration: by increasing organic matter, the soil acts as a carbon sink, removing CO2 from the atmosphere through crop photosynthesis and its incorporation into the ground.

Sequestration estimates vary widely depending on climate, soil type, crop and practices applied, so they should be treated as orders of magnitude rather than universal figures. There is broad agreement that agricultural soils have significant sequestration potential at a global scale, but that potential depends on maintaining the practices over time. These solutions fall within nature-based solutions.

How it is measured: the agricultural carbon footprint

To know whether a farm really reduces its impact, you have to measure it. Calculating the agricultural carbon footprint combines the activity's emissions (fuel, fertilisers, energy, livestock enteric fermentation) with the removals associated with soil and biomass sequestration. Since much of the agri-food impact is also water-related, many farms pair the measurement with the agricultural water footprint.

The GHG Protocol now has a dedicated rulebook for this area: the Land Sector and Removals Standard, together with its application guidance published in June 2026. It standardises how to account for both emissions and carbon captured in crops, livestock and land-use change. We analyse it in detail in the article on the new GHG Protocol standard for the agri sector.

Relationship with SBTi's FLAG and carbon farming

The FLAG (Forest, Land and Agriculture) framework of the Science Based Targets initiative is the standard that lets companies with land-intensive emissions set science-based climate targets. It requires near-term FLAG targets covering 5 to 10 years and aligned with a 1.5 °C pathway, and, on the net-zero horizon, a reduction of at least 72% of emissions by 2050 at the latest.

Version 1.2 of the FLAG guidance, published on 19 March 2026, changed two requirements worth knowing. The no-deforestation commitment no longer carries the old fixed deadline of 31 December 2025: the target date must now be no later than two years after the FLAG targets are submitted, and never later than 31 December 2030. The cutoff date is recommended to be no later than 2020, and if it is later it cannot be more recent than three years before submission. This version also aligns the guidance with the GHG Protocol's Land Sector and Removals Standard. Regenerative agriculture is one of the levers to reach these targets in the agri-food value chain.

Carbon farming goes a step further: it means managing the farm specifically to maximise sequestration and, in some cases, generating carbon credits from the CO2 removed. Here rigorous measurement is essential, because a credit is only worth something if the captured carbon is real, additional and durable.

Limits and cautions

Regenerative agriculture has real potential, but excessive enthusiasm should be avoided for several reasons:

• Permanence: soil carbon can be released again if intensive tillage resumes, so sequestration is not necessarily permanent.
• Saturation: a soil tends toward a new organic-matter equilibrium, so capture does not grow indefinitely.
• Lack of standardisation: with no single definition or methodology, comparing results across farms is difficult.
• Greenwashing risk: without solid measurement, it is easy to overstate the climate benefit.

For all these reasons, the golden rule is to measure before you claim and to base any claim on verifiable data.

Frequently asked questions

Does regenerative agriculture always reduce the carbon footprint?

It reduces certain emissions and favours soil sequestration, but the net balance depends on context: climate, soil type, crop and practices. That is why it must be measured case by case.

How does it relate to SBTi's FLAG standard?

FLAG is SBTi's framework for setting climate targets in land and agriculture. Regenerative practices help companies reduce their FLAG emissions and meet the associated no-deforestation commitment, whose target date, since version 1.2 of March 2026, cannot be later than 31 December 2030.

Is the carbon captured in the soil permanent?

Not necessarily. It can be re-emitted if the practices are abandoned, and the soil tends to saturate. That is why permanence is one of carbon farming's biggest challenges.

If you want to turn regenerative practices into verifiable data, you can calculate the product carbon footprint of your agri-food lines with Manglai.