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In the past, farmers had limited ability or incentive to formally measure and verify environmental outcomes.
Greenhouse gas emissions reductions, soil carbon, water quality, and biodiversity are complex to measure.
Methods have not been standardized, and the process can be time-consuming and costly.
As a result, access to environmental outcomes markets has been limited, and the full value of many on-farm practices has gone unrecognized.
The CANZA Marketplace is designed to change this.
Through the Marketplace, farmers can access measurement and validation options that align with their practices, while clearly understanding what is being measured, how it is valued, and the commitments required.
There is growing agreement that environmental results must be measured and verified to be credible. However, building an accurate and widely accepted Measurement, Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (MMRV) process is complex.
An MMRV framework helps turn different standards, guidance, and protocols into a clear set of steps that enable an environmental result to be evaluated and claimed.
More specifically, frameworks clarify the types of data or indicators, the measurement methods, governance processes, and accounting steps needed to ensure results are measured/modeled and verified with a high level of rigour.
Frameworks typically draw on established guidance to promote consistency and transparency and to build investor confidence.
Examples include:
The goal of the CANZA Marketplace is to connect farmers, companies, governments, and investors to advance climate-smart agriculture across Canada.
It will turn verified environmental outcomes into shared value — rewarding environmental stewardship, reducing risk, and encouraging investment in resilient, low-carbon food systems. CANZA is beginning this work through the Million Acre Challenge Program.
To support multiple revenue generation options, CANZA will integrate several existing standards, guidance documents, and protocols into its MMRV framework. This will establish a rigorous process that aligns with a range of verification and buyer-side requirements.
Importantly, this system will be streamlined and farmer-friendly. Farmers will not need to apply multiple times or manage separate data collection for each result. CANZA and its service providers will handle the alignment and translation of data behind the scenes.
CANZA’s framework does not aim to replace any pre-existing standards, protocols, registries, or MMRV technologies.
Instead, it draws on and aligns requirements from multiple systems to create participation pathways that lower barriers for farmers and outcome buyers. We expect the framework to improve over time as it is tested and refined.
Environmental results can be measured in several ways, and the specific process varies depending on the selected method.
In most cases, environmental outcomes can be assessed through modelling tools that use farm data to estimate change. In general, participating farmers will provide specific data about their farms and the new climate-smart practices they have implemented.
This data is then entered into a model aligned with the method to measure changes in environmental outcomes.
For certain results, like soil carbon, changes must be directly measured on-farm by comparing a ‘before’ and an ‘after’ state. A single measurement, such as one soil carbon reading, only provides a snapshot of conditions at a specific moment; it cannot show evidence of improvement over time.
