Grassroots Carbon has reached a major milestone in the U.S. voluntary carbon market, becoming the first company in the country to deliver 1.9 million tons of verified carbon removals through regenerative ranching. The announcement positions Grassroots Carbon as the largest soil carbon removal provider in the U.S., with more than 1.5 million tons already retired by corporate buyers to manage their emissions.

Since launching its regenerative ranching programme, the company has distributed $40 million in direct payments to ranchers for sequestered carbon and provided an additional $10 million in advance payments, enabling participation without upfront costs. The model links measurable climate outcomes with improved soil health, water retention, biodiversity, and rancher livelihoods across working grasslands.

Scaling Soil Carbon Removal Across U.S. Grasslands

Founded in 2021, Grassroots Carbon was the first U.S. company dedicated exclusively to measuring, verifying, and compensating ranchers for carbon stored in soils. By 2022, it had issued the nation’s first verified soil carbon payments. Today, the programme spans 2 million acres across 22 states, working with ranchers to implement regenerative grazing and land management practices.

The scale matters in a national context. The U.S. is home to an estimated 655 million acres of grasslands, which research suggests could store up to 1 billion tons of CO₂e annually if managed regeneratively. Grassroots Carbon aims to unlock this potential by embedding carbon finance directly into ranching economics.

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Measurement, Verification, and Market Integrity

A central factor behind the milestone is the company’s measurement and verification approach. Grassroots Carbon uses 1-metre soil core sampling, significantly deeper than the industry norm of 30 centimetres, capturing a larger share of soil organic carbon and improving permanence. The programme has built what it describes as the largest privately collected soil carbon dataset in the U.S., supported by advanced monitoring tools and third-party verification.

These practices are designed to address one of the key credibility challenges facing nature-based carbon removal: ensuring that claimed removals are real, durable, and measurable. The resulting credits are positioned as high-integrity removals suitable for corporate climate strategies.

Corporate Demand and Rancher Economics

Grassroots Carbon’s credits have been purchased by major corporates including Microsoft and Nestlé, reflecting growing demand for removals that go beyond avoidance and reduction. For buyers, the credits support emissions management strategies aligned with longer-term net-zero pathways.

For ranchers, the programme offers a parallel value proposition. Participating operations have reported up to 30-times higher water infiltration rates compared to degraded land, improving drought resilience and productivity. The combination of carbon payments and improved land performance is intended to make regenerative ranching economically competitive, rather than dependent on subsidies alone.

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Implications for Nature-Based Climate Solutions

The delivery of 1.9 million tons of removals signals a broader maturation of soil carbon markets in the U.S. While questions around permanence, scalability, and verification remain central to policy and investor debates, Grassroots Carbon’s progress suggests that working lands can deliver climate, ecological, and economic benefits simultaneously when supported by robust science and financing structures.

As scrutiny of carbon markets increases, particularly around quality and additionality, large-scale, data-driven programmes like this are likely to shape how nature-based removals are evaluated and integrated into corporate climate strategies. For now, the milestone marks a clear data point: regenerative ranching has moved from pilot-scale promise to material impact within the U.S. carbon removal landscape.

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