The Do's and Don'ts of a Buyers' Club: Recommendations for an EU Buyers' Club for Carbon Farming

This brief sets out recommendations for designing an EU Buyers’ Club for Carbon Farming under the CRCF. It argues that voluntary approaches such as the Buyers Club will be insufficient to deliver the agricultural transition, so the Club should be strategically designed as a transitional learning mechanism, to aggregate early demand, test CRCF methodologies, and inform future compliance policies. It recommends criteria for a strategic portfolio and it outlines how co-funding and claims could be governed. To ensure environmental integrity and value for farmers, it recommends that the Club avoid treating CRCF certificates as interchangeable and offsetting use cases, and to manage transaction costs and market power. The Club must not distract from improving the Common Agricultural Policy or from deploying future mandatory climate policies - both of which are needed to deliver the agricultural transition. the CAP’s central role in financing the agricultural transition.