Objectives of the service
The world’s population has doubled since the 1950s, putting immense pressure on agricultural systems. Industrialized agriculture, while boosting production, has significant negative impacts, including environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, health impacts and climate change. We therefore see an urgent need to shift towards regenerative agriculture, a holistic approach to farming that aims to restore and enhance health of soil, plants, animals and the environment. Financing this shift requires robust monitoring and evaluation to measure compliance and effectiveness, promote transparency and accountability, avoid ‘greenwashing’ and falsification of claims, ensure genuine emission reductions, strengthen agricultural policies and support their alignment with broader sustainability goals. The RegenAg – MRV service provides monitoring, reporting and verification of regenerative agricultural practices, such as cover cropping, no residue burn, crop rotation and improved irrigation. Through innovative use of satellite earth observation and geospatial analytics, cropping systems, irrigation techniques, soil treatment and residue management are monitored and evaluated. The service seeks to fill a gap in the market by providing comprehensive services that cover all major regenerative agricultural practices, objectively and accurately. Results are provided in the form of reports, maps, images and tabulated data.
Users and their needs
The service is targeted towards farm carbon project developers and other stakeholders that play key roles in the development, sale, investment and purchase of carbon credits through implementation of regenerative agricultural practices. The service will allow users and customers to better monitor projects, while fulfilling reporting and verification requirements easily, objectively and cost-effectively. Deploying these enabling technologies as part of the growing market for agricultural monitoring will help increase confidence in regenerative practices, enhancing credibility, augment scientific expertise and technical capacity, helping reduce both financial and technical barriers. The user needs of the service can be summarised as follows:
- Map project extents and individual fields, for effective oversight and evaluation.
- Evaluate historical and regional baseline scenarios.
- Determine scope and scale of regenerative agricultural practices employed.
- Measure efficacy and impact of agricultural practices implemented.
- Use scientifically sound and standardised approaches for data collection and reporting.
- Build investor confidence and create awareness around project activities.
Potential users and customers for the service are being targeted in the United Kingdom, India and Ghana.
Service/ system concept
The RegenAg – MRV service provides monitoring, reporting and verification services for regenerative agriculture. It evaluates A) cropping systems, such as cover cropping, fallowing and crop rotation. B) soil management practices such as enhanced rock weathering, no-till farming and biochar treatment. C) irrigation techniques such as alternate wetting and drying and farm-level water-harvesting. D) residue management, such as mulching and no residue burning. The service uses SatEO data and geospatial analytics to 1) demarcate project areas where regenerative agricutural practices are being implemented 2) delineate field boundaries, unit areas that are to be uniformly quantified 3) validate agricultural practices. Deliverables for reporting of farm carbon credits are then processed, these include 4) baseline scenario, a historical look-back period to evaluate pre-project agricultural practices or comparing with ‘control sites’, 5) project ‘additionality’, demonstrated by showing that practice was changed and that activity is not common practice and 6) project leakages, production declines due to changes in overall crops produced that must be accounted for in terms of carbon credits issued. Additionally 7) impact assessments are conducted to understand overall impact of the project on the surrounding environment.Results are reported in the form of maps, reports, tabulated data and farm imagery visualisations.
Space Added Value
Satellite Earth Observation (SatEO) plays a key role in the development and deployment of the RegenAg – MRV service. It is an essential data source used in mapping the project’s spatial extent and defining individual fields for quantified evaluation and monitoring. It is also vital for determining baseline scenarios, monitoring implementation of agricultural practices and evaluating project additionality and leakages. The spatial resolution, temporal coverage and global reach provided by SatEO is unmatched when compared to in-situ or field measurements. Its availability and data quality allows deployment of the service on a global scale, a significant improvement over field or drone data collection, both of which can be costly, sparse and irregular. Multispectral data from Sentinel-2 is used to evaluate spectral indices such as NDVI, which helps understand cropping patterns and delineate field boundaries. Soil treatment and residue management are also evaluated using spectral indices from Sentinel-2 data, these include tillage (NDTI), soil brightness (SBI) and burn scars (NBSR) indices. Similarly SAR data from Sentinel-1 is used to evaluate soil moisture and irrigation patterns. Other space-based data products used includes land cover and land use maps from ESA’s WorldCover dataset and thermal anomaly data from NASA FIRMS.
Current Status
The kickstart activity was completed in March 2026.
Engaged with over a dozen users, constituting farm carbon project developers and organisations supporting regenerative agriculture. Demonstrated the efficacy of the service through analyses and proof-of-concept analyses with four potential customers. Two partnerships were established with customers keen to engage in commercial projects.
Achieved significant progress in service development, with further refinement to be achieved through user engagements and project implementation. Feedback and validation from users is being sought for pilots implemented during the course of the activity.
Prime Contractor(s)
