Sustainability Frameworks, A Pathway To Resilience

9 June 2026

Scottish farmers are facing growing pressure to meet carbon, biodiversity, sustainability, and reporting requirements from buyers, consumers and government. Corporate value chain mechanisms that are likely to influence agriculture to some degree. This article explores what the main drivers and frameworks are, why they exist and what this means on the ground.

Understanding the demands and pressures from buyers and supply chains can help you stay ahead and respond to future changes. Demands of transparency, better measurement, and clearer evidence of sustainable practices are becoming the norm and part of doing business. There are many complimentary and overlapping public and private mechanisms, ranging from voluntary and regulatory frameworks to corporate reporting standards and international policy. It is important not to look at these in isolation, but rather in relation to one another.

What Is Being Asked And Why

At a global level, governments and businesses have made commitments to tackle climate change and biodiversity loss. This has a trickle-down effect across multiple sectors. Agriculture plays a key role in both challenges and as a result, there is increasing focus on how food is produced and how impacts are measured and mitigated.

Alongside this, retailers, processors and food companies are under pressure to reduce their own environmental impact. Often emissions in their value chain, scope 3 emissions, can be the largest component and most difficult to quantify and address. Therefore, they are seeking better primary data and increasingly accurate carbon footprints, alongside sustainable practices to show progress as they work towards their own targets and deadlines.

With climate and environmental risks now common considerations, being able to demonstrate strong performance in these factors puts those working in agriculture in a stronger position. In recent years companies and consumers have witnessed the effects of climate change on prices and availability. In 2024 the price of chocolate quadrupled as yields were diminished due to climate change related drought, prices have not yet recovered to pre 2024 values. In coffee the situation is similar with increased heat expected to impact yield and ultimately drive coffee production away from its traditional heartlands as the climate changes and average temperatures increase. These climate shocks have highlighted to food and drink companies of the need to invest and build resilience across their supply chains.

What Farmers Can Do

In practical terms, farms can often be asked to demonstrate or participate in a few key actions, many of which are already common across Scottish farms but need expanded, measured or captured to meet requirements:

Measuring greenhouse gas emissions through a carbon footprint
Undertake sustainable production practices, regenerative agricultural management or engage with pilot projects
Considering beyond carbon wider environmental factors such as soil health, biodiversity, and water
Baselining, keeping records and providing evidence for verification

Practical First Steps

For farmers looking to get started, a few simple actions can make a significant difference:

Engage With Your Buyer and Seek Advice

Ask clear questions about what is required both now and in the future, and what support they will provide. This helps avoid unexpected surprises, stay ahead of the competition and be confident in decision making. Regardless of where you sit in the supply chain the trickle down will reach you eventually.

Establish a Baseline

Complete a carbon audit using a recognised tool to understand where your emissions come from. If undertaking any biodiversity improvements, having a clear and measured starting point, beyond just anecdotal is an advantage.

Improve Data Quality

Ensure key records are accurate and up to date, including livestock numbers, fertiliser use, yields and energy use. Explore digital tools and technology that can capture data, support these tasks and reduce administrative burden.

Identify Quick Wins

Look for practical changes that can reduce costs or improve efficiency, such as optimised soil pH, better nutrient management, improved grazing strategies, or feed optimisation.

Be Cautious With New Schemes

Approach carbon markets or offset schemes carefully, making sure you fully understand the implications before committing and seek specialist advice. There often isn’t a single quick solution.

For Scottish farmers, the priority is not to master every framework as they all lead to the same outcomes; sustainable land management. What’s crucial is understanding what measures are relevant to your farming context, reporting data in the most appropriate format and taking practical steps. Those who act early by engaging with the process will be best placed to protect market access, take advantage of new opportunities, and future-proof their businesses in a changing agricultural landscape.

An Introduction To Key Standards and Frameworks

To help address these obligations, a number of different standards and frameworks have been developed. Most of them are aimed at big corporations with a large footprint and not individual farms, but there is a trickledown effect which can lead to repercussions across their supply chain. While it isn’t necessary for farmers to become experts in all of them it helps to understand what they are, how it influences the sector and what is being asked on the ground.

Much of the underlying science, scenarios and guidance used by policymakers and frameworks come from the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), the scientific body that assesses the latest data and climate research.

Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG Protocol)

The GHG Protocol and its associated agricultural guidance and product standards is designed to standardise how emissions are measured and reduced. It is a corporate accounting standard that tells organisations how to measure and report their greenhouse gas emissions (e.g., Scope 1, 2, and 3).

The GHG Protocol’s Land Sector and Removals Standard, which takes effect from January 2027, sets out how companies measure, track and report emissions and carbon removals linked to land use.

For farmers, even if you never interact with it directly, it influences how your emissions are calculated and reported.

It covers key areas such as:

Land management and land use change
Carbon removals with storage in land and geologic carbon pools
Emissions from biogenic products and products derived from technological CO₂ removals across the value chain

The standard helps companies to:

Understand the impact of land-based activities, management and land use change on emissions and removals
Set and track climate targets
Report GHG inventories including emissions and removals and report progress in a consistent and transparent way

Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) and FLAG

These mainly apply to financial institution and companies, including food and agriculture businesses, but they increasingly influence what is expected from farms through the supply chain.

The Science Based Targets initiative helps companies set emissions reduction targets in line with climate science. Within this, the FLAG (Forest, Land and Agriculture) guidance focuses specifically on land-based sectors. 11,000 companies have either already set or committed to setting greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets with the SBTi representing 40% of global market capitalisation and a quarter of global revenue.

Large food companies are using SBTi to set their climate goals and are passing these expectations down their value chain. For farmers this means an increased focus on adopting practices that reduce emissions and increase efficiency across their land management, backed by science. While farmers are not typically setting SBTi targets themselves, the influence of these targets is increasingly felt through buyer requirements.

SBTi FLAG guidance requires companies to:

Measure emissions from land use, livestock, fertilisers, and land use change, alongside carbon stored in soils and vegetation
Set short-term (5–10 year) and long-term (to 2050) emissions reduction targets
Commit to zero deforestation
Include both land-based and wider energy-related emissions in their targets

Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD)

Applies to large companies within the EU or those with substantial operations across the region.

The CSRD is a key European Union regulation designed to standardise corporate reporting on Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) issues. It requires applicable companies to disclose comprehensive, independently audited information on their sustainability impacts, risks, and opportunities alongside their regular financial reporting. Failure to comply with this legislation can result in hefty fines and in some cases prosecution of company directors. CSRD came into force in 2025.

Sustainability Reporting Standards (SRS)

Essentially the UK equivalent to CSRD and companies with significant operations in both the EU and UK will be required to comply with both.

SRS varies in some aspects to CSRD. It is also aimed at large companies and it has a cascading effect on smaller businesses across the supply chain, by demanding SRS aligned sustainability metrics and actions to be help achieve desired aims. SRS comes into force in 2027 and is designed to help UK companies report clearly and consistently on material sustainability and climate-related risks and opportunities. There are two core standards that are closely aligned with global standards, such as the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), which ensures UK businesses will be reporting in a comparable and meaningful way.

Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) and Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD)

Frameworks aimed primarily at organisations that need to understand and disclose environmental risks with financial implications.

There is a shift from a narrow farm carbon focus to broader whole-farm or wider landscape sustainability that considers a range of metrics. The TNFD framework expands the focus beyond carbon to include nature-related risks and impacts. The framework guides organisation on reporting how their activities depend on and impact nature, to clearly identify, manage and disclose these nature related risks and opportunities. This reflects growing recognition that climate and biodiversity are closely linked. On farm, this can mean greater attention on practices that;

Promote positive soil health and structure

Enhance biodiversity and habitat management

Protect water use and quality

TCFD is a framework that helps companies disclose how climate change affects their financial performance, focusing on governance, strategy, risk management, metrics and targets. Its goal is to give investors and stakeholders consistent and useful information about climate-related risks and opportunities. The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) officially disbanded in late 2023 after fulfilling its mandate but its responsibilities for monitoring climate disclosures were transferred to the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) Foundation and integrated into the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB).

Real-World Implications

The above standards and frameworks help to shape how farms interact with the wider value chain they form part of. They provide clarity on how companies account for and how they will reduce the impact of their agri-supply chain and includes requirements on monitoring the emission removals and reduction from land-based activities to ensure effective reporting. This will result in corporations increasing their engagement with their agri-supply chain, providing incentives and mandatory requirements on actions that will have a positive impact.

For most farms these frameworks and standards are not designed specifically for them but have repercussions. Aligning and being aware of these policy and supply chain demands can help support farms to stay competitive, take advantage of opportunities and future-proof the business.

While the focus is often on compliance, there are clear potential benefits. Improving efficiency in areas such as feed use, fertiliser application, and energy consumption can reduce both emissions and costs. Farms that can demonstrate strong performance may gain preferred supplier status or be better positioned for future premiums.

There is also an opportunity to strengthen overall business resilience and be more adaptable to the threats faced by climate change. Understanding your farm’s carbon footprint and resource use can support better decision-making and long-term planning.

As land managers there are positive actions you can undertake on your land, from low-cost interventions to longer term investments and practices that can be taken, balancing food production, costs and security with environmental aims. Valuing your natural capital and the range of benefits it provides will deliver not just environmental and wider benefits, but longevity of your business.

There are costs associated with many of the actions that are being asked by buyers and rightly, these costs and associated benefits need to be shared. Supply chain incentives may result in potential premiums or additional payments to undertake regenerative farming or sustainability improvements. Genuine engagement is essential to ensure fairness and win-win scenarios. Increasingly, collaboration and landscape scale initiatives will be the preferred options, beyond small pilots and small-scale implementation, Therefore, being open to teaming up with a mix of private and public entities, neighbours and land managers with shared goals to derisk and maximise wider benefits is essential.

In terms of data collection and management, in many cases, the work is already being done and the information required is already being collected. It simply needs to be organised and presented clearly for transparent reporting. Ignoring these requirements carries significant risk, farms that cannot provide the required information may find it harder to access certain markets, contracts or finance. Over time, this could affect competitiveness, particularly where buyers prioritise suppliers who can demonstrate environmental performance. There is also a risk of missed opportunities, including access to future support schemes which are conditional on environmental performance or sustainability-linked finance.

Sustainability Frameworks, A Pathway To Resilience

What Is Being Asked And Why

What Farmers Can Do