What LSRS is
The Land Sector and Removals Standard was published by the GHG Protocol on 30 January 2026 and takes effect on 1 January 2027. It is the accounting rulebook for emissions and removals from land: how to calculate land use change, how to treat carbon that comes back out of the atmosphere, and what may be claimed on the strength of what evidence.
It is not EU law and there is no regulator behind it. It reaches most food companies through a different door: SBTi makes LSRS mandatory for FLAG accounting from the same date. If you hold a FLAG target, or intend to submit one, this is not optional and it is not far away.
The requirement people miss
Most of the attention goes to removals. The obligation that actually changes your data collection is the commodity one. At minimum you must be able to say which agricultural commodities you buy or sell, in what volumes, and from which countries. That applies to everything agricultural you handle, not to a fixed list.
How precisely you can answer decides what you are allowed to claim. LSRS works in three tiers:
| Tier | Data you use | What it lets you claim |
|---|---|---|
| Country | Statistical averages for the jurisdiction you source from | A defensible baseline, and nothing origin-specific |
| Sourcing region | Averages at the first collection point: the silo, the mill, the dairy | Regional differences, once you can show the goods came from there |
| Farm | Field-specific data from the land management unit | Farm-level improvements, and the door to claiming removals |
Going finer than the country requires physical traceability, proven with a chain of custody model. Four are accepted: identity preservation, segregation, controlled blending, and some forms of mass balance. That last one matters, because the 2022 draft rejected mass balance outright and a great many food supply chains cannot operate without it.
What you have to be able to show
A single blended number is no longer conformant. Reporting has to separate:
- The four land categories. Land use change, land management net biogenic CO₂, production emissions, and biogenic products, not merged into one land figure.
- Removals, kept apart from emissions. Netting a removal quietly against an emission is specifically out.
- Agricultural land occupation, in hectares. A physical quantity alongside the emissions.
- Each of the above by scope and by Scope 3 category, rather than as a portfolio total.
Claiming removals raises the bar again: traceability to the land or facility where the carbon is stored, primary data of sufficient quality, and ongoing monitoring. Your suppliers are allowed to do that monitoring on your behalf, which is the whole argument for collecting it through a shared platform rather than a yearly questionnaire.
Three commodity lists, three purposes
Three separate obligations land within about twelve months, each with its own idea of what a commodity is. They are routinely conflated, so it is worth holding them apart.
| Regime | Scope | Purpose | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| EUDR | Seven commodities: cattle, cocoa, coffee, oil palm, rubber, soya, wood | Deforestation-free due diligence, traced to the plot of land | 30 Dec 2026 for large and medium operators |
| SBTi FLAG | Eleven commodities across 26 regional pathways; no-deforestation commitments cover seven, including cocoa, coffee and rubber | Target setting and progress | Zero-deforestation date within two years of submission, never later than 31 Dec 2030 |
| LSRS | Everything agricultural you buy or sell | How land emissions and removals are accounted for | 1 Jan 2027, and mandatory for FLAG accounting from then |
EUDR asks whether a plot was deforested. FLAG asks what you are committing to. LSRS asks how you calculated the number and how well you can prove where the commodity came from. The same procurement data answers all three, which is the one piece of good news in the pile.
Where to start
- Map your commodities to volumes and countries. This is the minimum LSRS asks for and most companies cannot produce it cleanly today.
- Work out which tier each one sits on. Country default, sourcing region, or farm. You will find the answer differs sharply by commodity.
- Pick the handful worth moving up a tier. Usually the ones carrying the most land use change, not the ones you buy most of.
- Check your chain of custody claims hold. If you report at sourcing-region level, you need the custody model to back it, not an assumption.
- Separate your land figures now. If land use change, land management, production and removals are currently one number, splitting them is the work, and it does not depend on any pending decision.
How CarbonCloud helps
The model is already built the way LSRS asks you to report. Every product decomposes through its supply chain to the farm gate, where around 20,000 crop and animal products across 192 countries carry their own emission factors, so the commodity, its origin and its land emissions are the native unit rather than something derived at the end. Land use change, land management and production emissions are held apart, per gas, and roll up by scope and Scope 3 category.
The traceability tiers map onto what the platform already does: a country default to begin with, sharpened as suppliers connect, and farm-level where a producer has joined. The Primary Data Share tells you which tier each number is actually on, so you know what you are entitled to claim before you commit to a target.
Sources: GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Standard, published 30 January 2026, effective 1 January 2027; SBTi FLAG guidance. This guide is not legal advice, and LSRS is an accounting standard rather than legislation.