The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) has approved the first two sustainable agriculture carbon credit methodologies to carry its Core Carbon Principles (CCP) label — the highest integrity standard available in voluntary carbon markets. The approved methodologies are the Climate Action Reserve's Soil Enrichment Protocol (SEP) v1.1 and Verra's VM0042 Improved Agricultural Land Management (IALM) v2.2. Projects operating under both methodologies are now preparing large credit issuances scheduled for 2026.
CAR's Soil Enrichment Protocol v1.1 covers improved agricultural practices that enhance Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. CCP approval comes with specific conditions: projects must have a Project Implementation Agreement with a minimum 40-year permanence commitment and must exclude rotational and intensive grazing practices. The permanence requirement is notably stringent, reflecting the long time horizons inherent in soil carbon sequestration.
Verra's VM0042 covers Improved Agricultural Land Management across a wide range of practices including reduced tillage, improved residue management, crop rotation, optimised fertiliser use, and improved irrigation. Conditions include measuring soil organic carbon using any methodology-approved technique except Digital Soil Mapping — a quality assurance measure that prioritises proven measurement approaches over newer, less-validated digital methods.
The CCP label addresses one of the core challenges in the voluntary carbon market: the proliferation of methodologies of varying quality that creates confusion for buyers and undermines confidence in credit integrity. With only approximately 51 million credits carrying CCP approval as of December 2025 — just 4% of total 2024 issuance — the expansion of CCP coverage into agriculture represents a meaningful increase in available high-integrity supply. Corporate buyers committed to quality standards can now add agricultural carbon credits to their portfolios with greater confidence.
The ICVCM's expansion into agricultural methodologies signals that the voluntary carbon market is maturing into a quality-stratified system where buyers can reliably distinguish high-integrity credits from lower-quality alternatives. At TrustVal, we work with clients developing and procuring nature-based and agricultural carbon projects where measurement rigor is non-negotiable. CCP-labelled methodologies establish clear, auditable standards that digital MRV technologies can support directly — from continuous soil monitoring to satellite-based land use verification. This is exactly the direction the market needs to go.
Primary source: ICVCM Press Release | Verra announcement
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