Credit buyer · England, Scotland
Soil Capital carbon payments (arable)
Measures your farm's carbon each year and pays you for tonnes of CO2e reduced or stored by selling certificates to companies, with a guaranteed minimum price.
- From
- Soil Capital
- How much
- Minimum £23 per certificate (1 tCO2e) for the 80% of certificates put on the market; farmer gets 70% of the final sale price; 20% held back 10 years as a reserve. Fees: £250 one-off baseline, then £3/ha/year. Soil Capital reported UK farmers averaged £55/ha for 2023.
- Who can apply
- Arable farmers in the UK, France and Belgium, conventional or organic (some livestock allowed). Now recruiting the 2027 harvest (8th cohort).
- Buys
- soil carbon
What you’ll need
- Arable rotation
- Field records (inputs, cultivations, yields)
- Annual data entry
How to apply
- Sign up at app.soilcapital.com/signup
- Pay for and complete the baseline
- Change practices and enter data each year
- Receive payment when certificates sell
Soil Capital says no binding commitment and you can leave any time, but annual fees are due whether or not certificates sell, and payment depends on sale. Also runs supply-chain programmes for Cefetra, PepsiCo (rapeseed), Nestle and Heineken. Soil carbon credits can be reversed if practices stop or soils lose carbon, so schemes keep a buffer and may claw back. Prices are not fixed and depend on buyers. Measurements are disputed (much soil carbon sits below the 30 cm usually sampled). There is still no published UK Farm Soil Carbon Code. Check data ownership, exit rules and what happens to SFI stacking.
Similar schemes
- Cefetra Ecosystem Services Open all yearCefetra with Soil CapitalPays arable growers who sell grain/oilseeds through Cefetra for verified sustainable practices, so food companies can claim lower Scope 3 emissions.
- AgreenaCarbon Check it’s runningAgreenaIssues Verra-registered carbon certificates for regenerative arable practice which you can keep, sell, or have Agreena sell for you.
- Agroforestry carbon credits (status) Check it’s runningSoil Association Agroforestry Carbon Code projectA project explored a UK code for agroforestry carbon credits; We found no operating code or company buying agroforestry carbon from English farms in 2026.
- Hedgerow Carbon Code Check it’s runningAllerton Project (Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust)A draft code to let farmers sell carbon from new hedges or letting hedges grow bigger; it is not yet a working market and nobody currently buys hedgerow carbon under it.
- Trinity Natural Capital Markets / Sandy Check it’s runningTrinity AgTechSandy software calculates farm carbon and biodiversity; the sister marketplace (Trinity NCM) was set up for farmers to sell credits to companies of their choice.
- UK Farm Soil Carbon Code (status) Check it’s runningSustainable Soils Alliance consortiumA planned national standard for selling farm soil carbon; it is not a buyer and no code had been published by October 2026.
Checked against the official pages on 29 October 2026. Sources: 1, 2. Always read the official page before you apply.