Climate change and water stress threaten rice production globally, while companies increasingly need credible and traceable information on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions within their agricultural supply chains. Yet smallholder farmers – who produce most of the world’s rice – often face significant barriers in generating the data and evidence needed to demonstrate climate performance and access potential benefits from lower-emission production.
The Sustainable Rice Platform (SRP) is exploring how its existing sustainability standard, assurance and traceability infrastructure can be extended to address this gap. The Low-Carbon Assurance Module (L-CAM) is an emerging approach for quantifying and assuring farm-level GHG performance associated with relevant rice production practices.
Rather than creating a separate carbon standard, L-CAM builds on existing SRP systems, including producer group Internal Management Systems, third-party assurance and traceability, while integrating GHG measurement and reporting approaches. The aim is to generate credible GHG information that can support value-chain accounting, reporting and decision-making, subject to applicable GHG accounting and claims requirements.
An important question being explored through the project is how the value of credible GHG data can translate into meaningful incentives for producers. Buyer interest in better Scope 3 and agricultural emissions data does not automatically translate into finance for farmers to adopt lower-emission practices or cover the additional costs of data collection, MRV and assurance. Understanding this connection between credible data, buyer value and producer incentives is therefore an important part of the project’s learning.
