Scope 3 solutions for agricultural supply chains and food-system inputs
Procure EACs for Food & Beverage
Tell us what you're looking for, and our team will help guide you toward the EAC categories, producer options, and procurement approach that fit your Scope 3 goals.
🍎 Food and beverage companies face significant Scope 3 exposure from fertilizer, agricultural inputs, packaging, and logistics - often far upstream of direct supplier relationships.
S3 Markets helps teams support low-carbon production through high-integrity Environmental Attribute Certificates with registry-backed issuance, transfer, and retirement records.
Scope 3 EACs for Food and Beverage Companies
Food and beverage Scope 3 emissions start long before the finished product.
For many food and beverage companies, some of the most important emissions sources sit upstream in agricultural production. Fertilizer, crop inputs, ingredient supply chains, processing, packaging, and logistics can all contribute materially to Scope 3 Category 1 purchased goods and services.
Low-carbon fertilizer is one of the clearest opportunities. Ammonia-based fertilizer is essential to modern agriculture, but conventional production can be emissions-intensive. S3 Markets gives food and beverage companies a way to support lower-carbon ammonia and fertilizer production through Environmental Attribute Certificates that can be issued, transferred, allocated, and retired with clear documentation.
Decarbonize the agricultural inputs behind food and beverage supply chains.
Address Scope 3 emissions from fertilizer, agricultural inputs, packaging, logistics, and food-system supply chains through high-integrity Environmental Attribute Certificates.
Relevant markets:
- Low-carbon ammonia
- Low-carbon fertilizer
- Low-carbon nitrogen products
- Low-carbon DAP or other fertilizer inputs, where available
- Low-carbon freight / electric trucking
- Low-carbon plastics / petrochemicals for packaging
- Low-carbon aluminum for beverage packaging
- Low-carbon steel, cement, and concrete for food manufacturing facilities, warehouses, distribution centers, and cold-storage infrastructure
Why food and beverage companies need an agricultural-input strategy
Food and beverage companies are under pressure to make measurable progress on Scope 3 emissions, but agricultural supply chains are complex. A company may source crops, ingredients, or commodities from suppliers, processors, aggregators, distributors, and farmers without directly purchasing the fertilizer used upstream. That creates a practical problem: the emissions are material, but the procurement pathway is indirect.
Supporting outcomes:
- Support low-carbon fertilizer and ammonia production
- Address upstream agricultural emissions even when physical traceability is difficult
- Complement regenerative agriculture, supplier engagement, and direct procurement programs
- Create a demand signal for lower-emission agricultural inputs
- Support near-term action while low-carbon physical supply chains continue to develop
- Build an auditable record of issuance, allocation, transfer, and retirement
- Reduce reliance on spreadsheets, PDFs, emails, and manual attestations
- Move from one-off pilots to repeatable Scope 3 procurement programs
Customer proof
A real-world model for low-carbon fertilizer attributes.
PepsiCo and TalusAg announced a collaboration to advance fertilizer decarbonization across global agricultural supply chains through low-carbon ammonia environmental attributes. The collaboration shows how food and beverage companies can use market-based mechanisms to support lower-emission fertilizer production while physical low-carbon supply chains and logistics continue to develop.
S3 Markets provides the Environmental Attribute Certificate lifecycle management infrastructure supporting the issuance, tracking, and retirement of what the parties believe to be the world's first tokenized ammonia fertilizer EACs from TalusAg's Boone, Iowa project.
- Low-carbon ammonia attributes tied to agricultural supply-chain emissions
- Book-and-claim structure where the environmental attribute is tracked separately from the physical fertilizer flow
- Registry-backed issuance, tracking, and retirement
- A practical model for near-term Scope 3 action while physical low-carbon supply and logistics scale
- Demand signal for low-emissions ammonia and fertilizer production
- A way to support fertilizer decarbonization while preserving farmer affordability and supply-chain resilience
Relevant EAC categories for food and beverage companies
1. Low-carbon ammonia
Ammonia is a foundational input for nitrogen fertilizer. Low-carbon ammonia EACs can help food and beverage companies support lower-emission fertilizer production even when they do not physically purchase ammonia themselves.
2. Low-carbon fertilizer
Fertilizer is one of the most important agricultural-input categories for food and beverage Scope 3 strategies. Low-carbon fertilizer EACs can help buyers support cleaner input production while preserving flexibility for farmers, retailers, distributors, and downstream food companies.
3. Nitrogen products and DAP
Where available, EACs tied to low-carbon nitrogen products, DAP, or other fertilizer inputs can help buyers address crop-linked emissions across specific supply sheds, ingredients, or agricultural sourcing programs.
4. Freight and logistics
Food and beverage supply chains rely on inbound agricultural logistics, refrigerated transport, regional distribution, and retail delivery. Low-carbon freight or electric trucking EACs can support logistics-related Scope 3 action.
5. Packaging materials
Packaging is often a major emissions category for food and beverage companies. Low-carbon plastics, petrochemicals, aluminum, paper, cardboard, or other packaging-related EACs may be relevant depending on available supply.
6. Cold chain and processing inputs
Refrigeration, processing, fuel use, industrial gases, and facility operations can all contribute to value-chain emissions.
7. Construction materials
Food manufacturing facilities, warehouses, distribution centers, cold-storage facilities, and retail infrastructure all rely on cement, concrete, and steel.
How S3 Markets helps food and beverage companies
S3 Markets helps food and beverage companies turn complex upstream emissions challenges into actionable EAC procurement programs.
Key capabilities:
- Access to production-linked EACs from low-carbon ammonia, fertilizer, and other commodity producers
- Registry records for EAC issuance, allocation, transfer, and retirement
- Documentation linked to production data, facility information, emissions-intensity data, methodology references, and verification materials
- Support for both direct value-chain programs and broader book-and-claim models
- Audit-ready retirement records for sustainability, procurement, finance, legal, and assurance teams
- A practical workflow for farmers, agricultural retailers, producers, and downstream food companies
- A portfolio approach that can include fertilizer, packaging, freight, processing inputs, and construction materials
Common food and beverage use cases
- Low-carbon fertilizer procurement programs
- Agricultural Scope 3 reduction strategies
- Regenerative agriculture program support
- Supplier and farmer engagement
- Ingredient-specific emissions reduction programs
- Low-carbon crop or supply-shed pilots
- Food manufacturing and processing emissions strategies
- Packaging decarbonization
- Cold-chain and logistics decarbonization
- Scope 3 Category 1 purchased goods and services programs
- Retirement-backed claims for sustainability reporting
Two ways food and beverage companies can use EACs
1. Direct value-chain programs
In some cases, low-carbon fertilizer or another low-carbon input may move through a documented physical supply chain involving producers, retailers, farmers, processors, and downstream food companies. S3 can help document the movement of attributes through that chain and support a crop, ingredient, or supply-chain claim where appropriate.
2. Book-and-claim programs
In other cases, physical traceability may be difficult because agricultural supply chains are fragmented, commingled, or intermediated. A book-and-claim model allows the verified low-carbon attribute to be allocated separately from the physical product, helping food and beverage companies support fertilizer decarbonization even when direct product matching is not feasible.
Both models can be useful. The right structure depends on the buyer's goals, supply-chain visibility, reporting needs, and relationship to farmers, retailers, and suppliers.
Supplier engagement is necessary. It is not always sufficient.
Food and beverage companies should continue working directly with farmers, suppliers, processors, and agricultural partners. But supplier engagement alone can be slow, fragmented, and difficult to scale across every crop, region, supplier, and input.
EACs can complement those efforts by creating a clear market signal for lower-carbon production and a practical system for documenting the environmental attributes associated with that production.
Built for credible agricultural supply-chain documentation
Agricultural supply chains are difficult to document manually. Fertilizer may move through producers, distributors, ag retailers, farmers, processors, and food companies before the emissions benefit reaches the buyer's reporting boundary. S3 Markets is designed to make that process easier to administer and easier to trust. The platform can track when low-carbon commodity attributes are created, allocated, transferred, and retired; preserve supporting documentation; and provide buyers with an audit-ready package to support careful Scope 3 reporting.
What this is - and what it is not
What it is:
- A secure system for tracking low-carbon fertilizer and commodity attributes
- A way to help food and beverage companies support agricultural supply-chain decarbonization
- A practical tool for reducing manual documentation and double-counting risk
- A market mechanism that can support lower-carbon input production
- A complement to supplier engagement, regenerative agriculture, and direct procurement
What it is not:
- It is not a speculative offset program
- It is not a replacement for farmer participation
- It is not asking every supply-chain participant to become a carbon-market expert
- It is not a requirement to publicly disclose sensitive commercial information
- It is not a substitute for credible emissions data, verification, or documentation
What food and beverage buyers get from S3 Markets
Better upstream visibility
Understand the low-carbon commodity production behind the EAC, including producer, facility, methodology, emissions-intensity, and supporting documentation.
Lower-friction participation
Enable farmers, retailers, suppliers, and downstream buyers to participate without relying on fragmented spreadsheets, PDFs, emails, or one-off attestations.
Audit-ready records
Receive retirement-backed documentation that can support internal review, sustainability reporting, and external assurance workflows.
Scalable Scope 3 action
Move from pilot projects to repeatable programs across crops, regions, commodities, suppliers, and brands.
Stronger demand signals
Help low-carbon fertilizer and commodity producers secure the revenue confidence needed to scale production.
Example: Low-carbon fertilizer EACs
A food and beverage company wants to address emissions associated with crop production, but it does not directly purchase ammonia or fertilizer. A low-carbon ammonia producer creates fertilizer with a lower emissions profile than conventional production. The physical fertilizer may move through normal agricultural channels, while S3 issues and tracks the corresponding environmental attributes as EACs.
The buyer can purchase and retire those EACs to support its broader agricultural Scope 3 strategy, while the producer receives additional revenue tied to the climate value of its lower-carbon production.
Designed for standards-aware Scope 3 teams
Food and beverage companies need instruments that can withstand scrutiny from sustainability, procurement, finance, legal, and assurance teams. S3 Markets is designed to support a standards-aware workflow with clear certificate records, supporting documentation, lifecycle tracking, and retirement-backed claim evidence.