by Kristjan Luha, co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer of eAgronom
The climate crisis has many battlegrounds, but few are as intensely scrutinised and troubling as the food and agricultural sector. The industry’s environmental impact is clear – the sector is both a source of the emissions and a potential part of the solution. At the heart of this discussion is the sector’s problem with Scope 3 emissions that occur outside a company’s direct operations.
Scope 3 emissions are typically found buried deep within supply chains and tend to comprise 70-90% of greenhouse gases emitted by major food conglomerates.
A 2025 report by PepsiCo found that 92% of the company’s total GHG emissions came from Scope 3 sources. A significant share of these emissions arise from on-farm production processes like soil management, fertilizer use, fuel consumption and upstream inputs, making it an incredibly pressing issue and one that’s proven difficult to address.
A Scope 3 state of emergency
Scope 3 emissions are not just a sustainability challenge, they are also a business risk. Regulatory pressure is mounting. The EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) will require full disclosure of value‑chain emissions and will intensively scrutinise gaps. Investors and lenders are aligning capital with sustainability. Companies without credible decarbonisation pathways risk losing access to green financing or facing higher costs in the future. Consumers are increasingly demanding lower carbon products and meaningful climate leadership from brands. Inaction not only threatens to harm reputations but also the ecological functions the industry depends on, accelerating soil degradation and extreme weather events. This is where collaboration across the value chain becomes essential, especially between food companies and the farmers who form the foundation of their supply networks.
The Overlooked Emissions
Food companies recognise that the farmers at the origin of their supply chain are the key to fixing this problem. They are the first and most critical decision makers influencing the greenhouse gas emissions that end up in the company’s Scope 3. Yet their position is rather distant from farm operations, operating through multiple intermediaries and fragmented supply chains and addressing the emissions challenge conflicts with other business priorities, like keeping competitive and flexible negotiating positions.
Farmers influence a broad range of natural cycles and emission sources. Decisions about tillage, fertiliser timing, cover cropping and crop rotation have a huge influence on soil carbon stocks, nitrogen efficiency and fuel use. Given the right tools and incentives from food companies, farmers could potentially reduce emissions while simultaneously improving resilience and profitability.
However, the transition needs care! In established intensive farming systems, farmers are dependent on inputs that are closely tied to yield and farm economic viability. Reducing synthetic inputs and improving soils can help retain water, boost biodiversity and make farms more resilient to climate shocks like weather, pests and disease but it needs to be managed sensitively to avoid yield reductions in the interim. A successful transition, however, future-proofs these farms for seasons ahead.
Major challenges (and how to solve them)
Addressing Scope 3 emissions is not that straightforward. Traceability remains the biggest obstacle, where crops are aggregated, blended and transported across geographies. Food products rarely carry a direct link to the farm where they were grown. There is often no simple method for attributing the emissions from a food product to one specific grower or field.
Supply chain collaboration is the only way to address these issues and no two chains are the same. A livestock feed supply chain in Spain differs entirely from a wheat-to-bread chain in Ukraine. Sustainability programmes must be tailored to reflect each chain’s unique geography, commodity type and procurement methods, rather than relying on a one size fits all approach.
Data is another challenge. Farmers are often asked to submit the same information in different formats to multiple buyers, leaving them frustrated. Reporting and verification suffer for lack of standardisation. Additionally, measuring soil carbon is costly and complex, requiring robust sampling and modelling that smaller programmes cannot sustain. eAgronom enables a seamless and automated single data collection process for growers that delivers high quality emissions quantification, allowing farmers to focus on farming while building reliable and actionable datasets that they themselves and the food industry can use.
What works for farmers?
Farmers are the frontline partners that the food sector needs to tackle Scope 3. Any programme designed to reduce Scope 3 emissions at the farm level must be first designed to support farmers. These programmes must do more than just extract data from them and hand down arbitrary mandates.
eAgronom has experience supporting thousands of farmers, collectively managing 2.5M ha of European farmland, along their regenerative transition to reduce emissions and sequester carbon. Data collection is a huge burden, so we’ve designed technology that automates the flow of primary data direct from field to our reporting platform, enabling pre-populated end-of-season summaries for accurate product carbon footprint reporting.
Beyond data, our on-ground agronomists work closely with farmers to design and implement interventions that cut emissions, build soil carbon and strengthen farm resilience. Over the years, we have developed deep regenerative agricultural expertise in our core geographies by running field trials with universities and agribusiness partners. eAgronom also runs several annual events around these trial sites to facilitate peer-to-peer learning amongst our farmer networks.
Successful programmes require a careful balance of understanding the farm context, including ecological realities such as soil and climate, as well as cultural and political conditions such as subsidies and labour practices. Buyer‑supplier relations should be based on fair contracts and pricing that support shared goals. Shared investment spreads the cost of sustainability across all stakeholders. Risk mitigation is essential, as farmers are more likely to adopt new practices when supported by measures such as downside protection and long‑term purchasing guarantees linked to proven sustainability results.
The industry increasingly recognizes that collaboration with farmers is essential, but turning that mindset into action remains the real challenge. Navigating complex standards, balancing supplier–buyer relationships and securing budgets to support on-farm change often stall progress. Yet, if empowered, farmers can be the most powerful changemakers in this process. With the right data, financing and shared accountability, farmers can transform the food sector from a climate culprit into a climate leader. The sooner the industry acts to support farmers with this transition, the sooner Scope 3 emissions will take a potentially world-saving nosedive.
Read more: Anew Climate, InSoil Join Hands To Sell 500,000 Soil Carbon Credits From Lithuania
