India to pay Rs 2.9 crore to farmers for carbon credits

The Indian government has initiated the disbursement of over Rs 2.9 crore to 2,550 small farmers in Punjab and Haryana as payments for earned carbon credits. The funds were distributed via Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) to reward the adoption of regenerative farming practices that increase soil carbon and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Participating farmers utilized methods such as Direct Seeded Rice (DSR), reduced tillage, and improved crop residue management between 2019 and 2022. These practices are credited with saving an estimated 45 billion litres of water and preventing more than 200,000 tonnes of crop residue from being burned, which in turn avoided approximately 1,000 tonnes of PM2.5 emissions.

The initiative is part of ‘Aadi’, a farmer carbon programme launched in 2019 by Grow Indigo with technical guidance from the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR). The programme operates under the Verra VM0042 methodology and spans over two million acres and 100,000 farmers across seven states. The first round of payments covered roughly 30,000 acres and 50,000 carbon credits, with individual farmers receiving between Rs 3,000 and Rs 15,000.