From Degraded Soil to Durable Tonnes: De-Risking Removal that Builds Farmer Resilience

The carbon removal market is still too dependent on a handful of anchor buyers, and 2026 showed how quickly that base can thin out. Meanwhile the capital that funds adaptation, food security and land restoration in the Global South has barely touched removal at all. These two worlds should be talking, and mostly they are not. They should be talking because some removal pathways do double duty. For example, in enhanced rock weathering (ERW), the rock applied to a smallholder's field takes carbon out of the air, and it also lifts soil pH, restores degraded land and raises yields and incomes at no cost to the farmer. That changes who can pay for it. A tonne that also buys adaptation and restoration is something a development finance institution and Philanthropy (Donors, DFIs etc) or a corporate with sourcing exposure in the same landscape can justify in a way a plain credit never is. It changes the risk picture for buyers too, since a project that pays the farmer is a project farmers keep participating in, and durability depends on that. We want to leave with a concrete read on two things. What buyers actually need in order to sign longer and larger, and where adaptation, restoration and concessional money can absorb the risk they will not carry.