Advancing Scope 3 accounting in Food & Agriculture

Practical guidance on recalculation, substitution, removals, and traceability.

Food and agriculture companies are scaling value-chain interventions, but major gaps remain in how to credibly quantify and report Scope 3 outcomes—especially as GHG Protocol and SBTi guidance continues to evolve. This publication from the Value Change Initiative’s Food & Agriculture Working Group V provides clear, practitioner-oriented approaches for turning intervention results into robust inventory reporting. 

Download the paper to unpack four priority accounting challenges in Scope 3 Category 1 (Purchased Goods & Services): 

• Base years & recalculations — how to establish pre-intervention emissions, distinguish base years from baselines, and decide when recalculation is required vs. voluntary in practice. 

• Substitution of partial emission factors — conditions and methods for updating emission factors that can be used for the inventory, using relevant post-intervention data from affected activities. 

• Removals in Scope 3 — how removals can be used towards targets, and how to prepare for emerging LSRS requirements. 

• Physical traceability — why traceability is becoming essential for inventory claims, which Chain of Custody models can establish credible physical connection, and why alternatives could be needed in ag supply chains.