Reporting Impact

Our impact reports help organisations report progress against their specific sustainability targets and climate commitments. This is often referred to as Measurement, Reporting and Verification (MRV). We generate our reports and data for multiple audiences:

Read the new LENs Impact Report here.

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Farmers

For farmers, we generate sustainability information, with meaningful insights for their farm business transition plans and future land management decisions.

Companies

We help companies manage their carbon footprint, providing high integrity climate and nature claims, and help them understand risks in their supply chain.

Landscapes

We help evidence the transition to resilient landscapes for the benefit of communities and other landscape-dependent organisations, by demonstrating the impact that LENs is making on local landscapes.

Measurement

We measure impact across key environmental impact areas: soil health, biodiversity, water, and emissions reductions. Our measurement programme helps track changes year on year across these impact areas, with a view to understand how they interact to support and accelerate wider landscape resilience.

What makes us unique?

We are the first multi-stakeholder landscape initiative to have produced data and reports that:

Are compatible with SBTi FLAG and GHG Protocol LSRG

Offer robust carbon crop footprint accounting with verified methodologies

Includes carbon removals

Includes soil health, biodiversity and water metrics

Traceable to farm gate

Based on actual impact rather than projected

What our reports include

LENs produces impact reports containing claimable carbon data that organisations can use in their reporting and disclosure requirements. We released our first MRV reports to Nestlé Purina, Cereal Partners and PepsiCo in 2024, covering LENs activities in England, Italy, Poland and Hungary.

LENs does not issue carbon or biodiversity credits or certificates – intentionally. This is because we believe this is not in the interests of farmers – either from a financial or business management perspective. Carbon credits are also unlikely to benefit contract farmers with time-limited certainty on their access to land. A significant proportion of farms participating in LENs are contract and tenant farmers.

Secondly, we know that a transition to resilient landscapes requires much deeper and layered collaboration involving multiple stakeholders engaged in various supply chains. Carbon credits schemes are limited in scope, as they require a clear separation from other initiatives to ensure additionality criteria can be met. In LENs our focus is on systemic change, and helping all stakeholders in the network to build resilience and reduce risk.

LENs offers a depth of reporting that allows demand partners to prove the impact of their investments and galvanises farmers to continue on their regen journeys.

Donald Lunan

CEO, LENs

Methodology

We started to collect data and measure outcomes on every single participating farm in 2023, trialling multiple different carbon calculators and soil organic carbon models. With support from 3Keel, LENs also developed the first carbon outcomes allocation methodology – which allows the reporting of emissions reductions to multiple LENs funders in a way that all parties can confidently report data that tallies with their operational boundaries, does not double count benefits, or result in misleading claims.

LENs needs to provide farmers and funders with a high degree of confidence on the environmental benefits reported to them. Using the lessons from this first pilot, we produced in 2024 our very first MRV protocol. This document details the technical basis and methodologies used for measuring our impact.

The protocol has been externally reviewed by independent experts specialised in environmental measurement and carbon accounting. Our 2025 methodology is being developed and will be available from spring 2025, in time for the 2025 data collection campaign.

Standards

LENs MRV aligns with relevant existing and emerging standards and frameworks, including The Greenhouse Gas Protocol’s Land Sector and Removals Guidance (LSRG), The Science Based Targets initiative’s Forest, Land and Agriculture Guidance (FLAG), SAI Platform Regenerating Together Framework (RTF).

Metrics

Below is the full list of metrics that LENs will be reporting for every participating farm in 2025. Additional soil health metrics such as soil nutrients, pH, soil texture, VESS and earthworm counts are offered to new farms joining LENs.

Impact Areas

Soil Health

Soil organic matter
Bulk density
Soil cover %
Crop rotation diversity
Soil disturbance score

Biodiversity

On farm nature habitat ratio
Key species indicator

Water

Nitrogen use efficiency
Reduction in pesticide use
Water usage
Flood risk prevention

Climate Mitigation

Soil carbon sequestration
Hedgerow carbon sequestration
Crop emissions reductions

How is data collected?

Data collection is carried out by independent surveyors who visit each farm at a time compatible with busy farming schedules.

These survey organisations have been selected for their appropriate expertise, are familiar with the region, are trusted by farmers, and have gone through the detailed LENs training and onboarding programme.

To remain pragmatic and accessible in multiple countries, our measurement systems use a combination of Cool Farm Tool/Platform, xFarm data technologies and additional models and calculators. Our team of data analysts collate this information centrally for quality assurance and processing into custom-made reports.

Each year, we use feedback from farmers and supply aggregators from the data campaign to improve the next campaign, ensuring we remain adaptive and responsive to the needs of our network and to emerging trends and technologies.

Reporting leadership and innovation

Memberships and partnerships

LENs is fully aligned with SAI Platform's Regenerating Together Framework. LENs, through 3Keel, is an active member of the Cool Farm Alliance, member of the Value Chain Initiative, supporting the UK Task Force on Carbon Removals and partnered with OP2B to further work on accelerating resilient farming landscapes.

Being at the forefront of landscape scale impact measurement puts LENs Company in an incredible and unique position to share our know-how in navigating complex reporting frameworks without losing sight of supporting farmers with actionable insights.

Cat Wallis

LENs Impact and Data Lead

Data and Impact Team

LENs has a dedicated central team, who have developed the measurement, reporting and verification methodologies, from an initial pilot in 2023, to a fully scaled up and established system.

Catherine Wallis

Data and Impact lead

Oversees LENs strategy for impact reporting, which includes good data governance and data management processes, ensuring LENs protocols remain best-in-class and managing stakeholder relationships.

Ifeoma Idam

Senior Data Analyst

Responsible for data processing annual impact data into reports, and leading on our science-based measurement protocols.

Felicity Flower

Senior Programme Manager

Supports the development and roll-out of the MRV. She ensures that MRV systems are consistent across all regions, with meaningful data captured to report on outcomes and to help inform future investment decisions.

LENs also works closely with 3Keel who advise on latest evolutions in global carbon, biodiversity accounting and reporting frameworks.