READ TIME: 2 minutes
By: Bin Peng, Ph.D, Lead HabiTerre Scientist

Grazing lands represent one of the largest opportunities—and most significant challenges—for climate change mitigation in agriculture. HabiTerre is proud to offer a new pilot to bring scientific rigor and scalability to measuring, reporting, and verifying (MRV) greenhouse gas (GHG) outcomes on managed grazing lands.

1. The Potential: Big Land, Big Emissions, and the Path to Lower Carbon Beef

The beef sector is a major source of GHG emissions. Livestock production contributes about 12-19.6 percent of global GHG emissions, with beef alone constituting 44 percent of that figure^1-4. The primary emissions from beef production systems include enteric methane (CH₄) (from the cattle’s digestive process), N₂O from manure and fertilized feed production, and CO₂ from soil organic carbon and land use change¹.

The sheer scale of grazing land underscores its importance for climate solutions. In the US, grazing land accounts for over 659 million acres and 29% of the total U.S. land area⁵. This expansive acreage provides significant potential for Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) sequestration and GHG emission reduction when managed sustainably. Improved management practices like Adaptive Multi-Paddock (AMP) grazing can potentially achieve a significant reduction in net GHG emissions. Quantifying this climate benefit is key to supporting sustainable beef with a lower carbon intensity.

2. The Challenge: Fragmented Solutions and Data Gaps

Accurately quantifying the full climate impact of grazing practices is notoriously challenging:

• Incomplete and Fragmented Solutions: Existing approaches are often incomplete, focusing on a single GHG component like SOC sequestration or enteric CH₄ emissions. A truly credible carbon outcome or beef emission factor calculation requires an integrated approach that can integrate all three soil-based GHGs: SOC change, soil CH₄, and N₂O emissions with other non-soil emissions and beef production for a life cycle analysis.
• Animals as “Nature’s Engineers”: The interaction between grazing animals and the environment is complex and dynamic. Representing the grazing impact on vegetation dynamics and manure deposition from cattle is critical for quantifying soil-based emissions.
• Data Scarcity Across Extensive Lands: Grazing systems cover large, extensive land areas, leading to significant data gaps that are costly to fill. Collecting a high density of physical soil samples for SOC change is often cost-prohibitive at large scale. Accurate quantification relies on site-specific inputs, but long-term data sources for vegetation and management practices are often lacking.

3. HabiTerre’s Solution: SYMFONI™ for End-to-End MRV

To overcome these barriers, HabiTerre is excited to pilot its advanced modeling and MRV platform, SYMFONI™, for grazing lands, built upon its great success over cropland. The system is purpose-built to quantify high-resolution GHG outcomes with scientific rigor and operational scale.

• Integrated GHG Quantification: SYMFONI utilizes the process-based Ecosys biogeochemical model to simulate the sub-daily flows of carbon, nitrogen, water, and energy, capturing the full scope of GHGs: SOC change, CH₄ production/oxidation, and N₂O fluxes. This delivers a comprehensive net GHG emission (t CO₂e/acre/year) for each paddock.
• Advanced Model-Data Fusion (MDF) and Remote Sensing: SYMFONI implements AI-based Model-Data Fusion (MDF) using ground-measured and/or remotely-sensed data as constraints to improve model accuracy and reduce uncertainty of quantification. Our advanced remote sensing capacity lowers data collection costs and enables program-scale deployment.
• Scalable and Auditable: The system’s architecture supports asynchronous simulation processing and programmatic delivery of results for use in carbon programs and Scope 3 accounting. It aligns with the requirements of the Climate Action Reserve’s Soil Enrichment Protocol (SEP) v1.1 for offsetting and Land Sector and Removals Guidance (LSRG) for Scope 3 accounting.

By integrating our advanced remote sensing, process-based agroecosystem modeling, and artificial intelligence capacities, HabiTerre is working towards  providing a scalable MRV solution for managed grazing lands. A key piece of this work will be our continued prioritization of collaboration, working with industry partners to optimize our services for a commercial offering in the near future.

To learn more about the SYMFONI grazing pilot or explore if you have a project that might be a fit, reach out to sales@habiterre.com.

About Bin Peng, Ph.D:

Dr. Bin Peng, leading scientist of HabiTerre, specializes in process-based modeling, remote sensing, and environmental data science. In addition to his role at HabiTerre, he is an assistant professor on the nexus of agriculture and environment at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on the complexities of water, nutrient, and carbon cycles in agricultural landscapes and their connection to agricultural productivity and environmental sustainability. He utilizes field measurement, computational modeling (hydrological, cropping system, ecosystem, earth system), remote sensing, geospatial big data, model-data integration, and AI. Bin is passionate about developing innovative technologies for sustainable agri-food systems and environmental preservation amid land use intensification and climate change.

Sources

¹ FAO. 2023. Pathways towards lower emissions – A global assessment of the greenhouse gas emissions and mitigation options from livestock agrifood systems. Rome. https://doi.org/10.4060/cc9029en.

²https://foodandagricultureorganization.shinyapps.io/GLEAMV3_Public/

³ https://www.fao.org/family-farming/detail/en/c/1634679/ 

⁴ https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/food-agriculture-environment/livestock-dont-contribute-14-5-of-global-greenhouse-gas-emissions 

⁵ https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2024/december/ers-data-series-tracks-major-uses-of-u-s-land-with-a-focus-on-agriculture

READ TIME: 2 minutes
By: Jamie Ridgely, Chief Operating Officer and Jeff Seale, Ph.D., Ag Climate Standards Lead

We’ve spent the past year working with more than 25 experts across the food and agriculture value chain to develop a new GHG inventory methodology. It is called the HabiTerre Project Shed Approach. Today, we’re proud to release this framework for broader consumption.

The Problem We’re Solving

Agriculture is responsible for over 20% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, excluding food waste. Yet, the path toward lower emissions is obstructed by complexity, high costs, and fragmented systems. The result? Inaction and confusion.

Farmers face thin margins and overwhelming data demands. CPGs wrestle with unclear standards and scattered methodologies. Existing frameworks often prioritize perfection over practicality leading to stalled progress and missed opportunities.

Our Belief: Simplicity is a Strength

We believe that if we’re going to scale regenerative agriculture then we need methodologies that are farmer-friendly, corporate-aligned, and scientifically rigorous without being paralyzing.

That’s why we created the Project Shed Approach: a simpler, transparent, and scalable accounting framework that empowers companies to source lower-emission commodities and report them with confidence.

It’s not an intervention program. It doesn’t create carbon credits. Instead, it creates a clear path to track and incentivize real, measurable progress in agricultural emissions reductions within the supply chain.

What You’ll Find in the Methodology

• A clear definition of project boundaries (project shed)
• A path to integrate primary farmer data into inventory reporting
• MRV protocols that are both cost-effective and science-aligned
• Flexibility to track progress across crop rotations and mixed practices

An emphasis on data rights, traceability, and pragmatic monitoring without the barriers of carbon credit protocols

Check it it Out for Yourself

Read the methodology today and please reach out with any questions or comments. We can answer those via email or meeting to talk through. If you’re a food and ag company, a project developer, or a leader advancing sustainable ag innovation looking to learn more about working with HabiTerre, we’d love to hear from you.

Together, we can move from ambition to action—faster, smarter, and at scale.

👉Download the methodology
📬 Reach out to connect at clara.starr@habiterre.com

About Jamie:

Jamie Ridgely is a seasoned leader with a proven background in developing, managing, and scaling innovative sustainability solutions product strategies. Prior to joining HabiTerre, Jamie held several key positions at agriculture and technology companies, where she successfully led program, product, and operational teams, oversaw creation and scaling of a major soil carbon program, developed a scalable framework for conservation planning across the ag value chain, and executed the fruitful exit of a small ag tech company. In addition to her experience across many aspects of business, Jamie actively farms and firsthand experiences the implications of climate change and conservation efforts at field level.

About Jeff:

Dr. Jeffrey Seale is the Ag Climate Standards Lead at HabiTerre. Having worked in the fields of biochemistry and biophysics for more than 30 years, Dr. Seale has used his expertise to help develop innovations that improve the sustainability of agricultural systems. Currently, Jeff is working to develop market solutions and policy frameworks to accelerate the removal of greenhouse gas emissions in ag. Through achievements in science, policy, and advocacy, Dr. Seale is working to bring the goal of a more sustainable world to reality. He has been awarded 4 U.S. patents and is the author of 10 peer-reviewed publications and 2 book chapters. Jeff has been an invited speaker at the annual United Nations Climate Conference and has served as an expert reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.