Why Farmers Need To See The Money To Stay In Carbon Farming
Trishant Dev, programme officer for climate change at the Centre for Science and Environment, underlined that the primary question to ask must be whether “it is making economic sense for farmers to adopt a new practice and if it is incentive enough for them to make this behavioral change permanent”. Uttar Pradesh: Three years ago, Vinod Kumar Maurya (33) travelled village to village in Uttar Pradesh’s Sitapur on his two-wheeler to inform farmers about an upcoming carbon project in their region. Maurya’s tasklist was long, and so he packaged the information in simple terms: “Farmers who don’t burn their crop residue and plough it back to the soil instead, and who use minimal chemical fertilisers, will receive some subsidy.” Maurya did not have an answer to the follow-up questions of “when?” and “how much?” In Uttar Pradesh, carbon farming projects owned by private companies as part of Voluntary Carbon Market are onboarding wheat, paddy and sugarcane farmers for agricultural land management. Officially identified as VM0042 by Verra Carbon Registry, this methodology includes reduced tillage and improvements in fertiliser application, biomass residue and water management, cash and cover crop planting and harvesting practices, and grazing practices. These projects are centred around avoidance, as ISignal explained in the first part of this series. One initiative is getting farmers to eschew burning crop residue to avoid emissions. Companies are supporting farmers by facilitating the use of superseeder machines which help sow the wheat crop by mixing the crop residue into the soil. Another initiative is direct seeded rice (DSR), a technique that replaces flooded transplanting and reduces emissions. The resulting reduction in emissions, and the increased organic soil carbon are then used to generate carbon credits. These credits are bought by companies looking to reduce their own carbon footprints. One carbon credit typically represents one metric tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO₂e) reduced or removed, or the amount of emissions from a car on a road trip from Kanyakumari to Leh and back. The agriculture sector is responsible for 15% of India’s annual greenhouse gas emissions. As of July 2026, Verra has 42 agricultural and forestry projects registered in India, of which four use VM0042 methodology. ISignal looked at two of these projects—one by Boomitra, a climate-tech company based in San Mateo, California, and another by Varaha ClimateAg Private Limited, a climate-tech start-up based in Gurugram. The second project now lists Kheti Pte Ltd. as the project proponent, which is a subsidiary of Varaha, as confirmed by Shantanu Jain, who leads the latter’s CEO’s office. Boomitra’s project is structured as a grouped project including Uttar Pradesh where it is “under verification”, Abhinav Gupta, Director Project (APAC), Boomitra said. Varaha’s project is also registered as a grouped project, generating credits for Punjab-Haryana, planning to expand to wheat-rice cropping systems in the Indo-Gangetic belt including Uttar Pradesh. Taking the leap Maurya opened an application on his phone that flashed 5,970 acres on its home screen—the acreage he had onboarded under the project between April 2023 and April 2026. “The mammoth task,” as Maurya described it, had begun after Ozone Farmer Producer Company joined Varaha as a channel partner. Their primary job is to collect data and act as a bridge between the company and the farmers. “Initially they were indecisive on which farmers they wanted to work with, so we [Ozone] onboarded everyone who was interested. Then they asked us to shortlist farmers growing wheat and paddy,” he told ISignal. Using his 15 years of expertise in the field, he identified 1,250 farmers who stuck to growing the two crops due to geographical reasons such as low-lying land or soil quality. One of the firsts in the list was Subeg Singh (27) from Saraiyan Kaysthan village in Parsendi block in Sitapur district. Much before Varaha’s intervention began, Singh was using a Rs 2.5-lakh worth superseeder machine. The soil quality for his 30 acres’ land improved and wheat production rose by 2.5 quintals per acre, he told us. About 12 km away in Musepur village, the subsidy promise made Babloo Rajput (40), who owns 2 acres, to switch to superseeder in 2024. “For two consecutive years, I have produced 4.5 quintals of wheat in 1 bigha (0.2 acre here), as compared to 3 quintals earlier. The soil has definitely become more fertile,” he told ISignal. Singh explained that Varaha had initially promised a subsidy of Rs 1,750 to switch from crop-residue burning. “We received it in 2024. But the next year, they reduced it to Rs 700,” he told ISignal. While Singh spent a one-time cost of Rs 1.6 lakh on his superseeder machine in 2019, with the rest coming from a government scheme, other farmers pay Rs 1,700 per acre to rent it. Varaha’s subsidy is aimed at reducing this cost. “I remember them telling me that by selling carbon credits we might receive Rs 2,500-Rs 3,000 per acre, but when the initial subsidy itself has been reduced, how do we expect that we will get the carbon credits payment or not?” Singh said. He had heard about direct seeded rice (DSR) earlier, he said, but it was not until farmers from Punjab and scientists from the Krishi Vigyan Kendra answered his doubts—during a training by Varaha-Ozone—that he considered it. In 2025, he made the shift. “It is difficult to find labourers in the village for transplantation, and water requirements are too high. This will only increase in the future and DSR solves that. More farmers in the village are now interested,” Singh explained. He did see a small production drop the first year, he said, but it still made sense to continue as the overall cost was less, considering his large landholding. Close to his house, Kuldeep Singh (43) was overseeing wheat harvesting on his 15 acres of land under the sweltering April sun, with his turban doubled by a gamcha (cotton cloth). In his first DSR attempt, paddy production dropped by 2-3 quintals per acre “but at least we don’t need much water and labour for the job. It is difficult to comment how successful this might be in just a year”. He wants to fix probable mistakes in his method and try again.