Protocols
ESMC’s protocol estimates the environmental impact farmers generate on their land, added soil carbon, reduction in net greenhouse gas emissions, increases in water quality, and improvements to biodiversity in the field. All these benefits flow from soil health.
EcoHarvest operates protocols for carbon, water quality, and biodiversity outcomes.
Carbon
EcoHarvest sells outcomes for soil carbon and net greenhouse gases generated through a scientifically rigorous, standards-based, and cost-effective framework that meets corporate sustainability and reporting standards. We do this through two accounting approaches: intervention and inventory accounting.
- Inventory accounting focuses on creating an annual snapshot of emissions on field and compares those emissions to a past base year. Inventory accounting projects outcomes are Improved Emissions Factors (EF) and net removals.
- April 2026: ESMC published a Summary on our Protocol on Inventory Accounting.
- An ESMC white paper discusses inventory accounting and why it is being utilized in regen carbon programs.
- Intervention accounting focuses on isolating the impact of practices, like cover cropping and reduced till, on soil carbon and greenhouse gas emissions.
Water Quality
Through our EcoHarvest market program, we connect on-farm conservation practices to measurable water quality outcomes using transparent and rigorous science. Through water quality reporting, buyers can bridge the gap between field level outcomes and watershed improvements – showcasing how practices at the field level can improve water quality at the regional level. Impacts from these improvements are turned into Scope 3 outcomes available to buyers in the form of pounds of pollutant reduced per year. Read the complete technical documentation here.
Biodiversity
ESMC’s Biodiversity Estimation for Agriculture Tool (BEAT) is the newest component of the EcoHarvest Measurement, Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (MRV) platform. Inspired by the United Kingdom Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (UK DEFRA) Biodiversity Metric, the BEAT is designed to quantify biodiversity using five core terms: habitat quality, weighted functional presence, conservation priority, habitat size, and time response. Together, these terms capture ecological function, conservation context, and temporal dynamics, providing a structured framework for assessing biodiversity benefits associated with agricultural best management practices (BMPs).
This first version (v1) of the BEAT incorporates only estimated methods, which draw on publicly available datasets. It does not incorporate in-situ methods such as biodiversity and environmental measurements collected by a professional wildlife biologist or environmental scientist. Read complete technical documentation here.
