India’s First Soil-Carbon Payments: 2,550 Punjab, Haryana Farmers to Get ₹2.9 Crore

India has launched its first soil-carbon payments, with more than ₹2.9 crore being disbursed to 2,550 farmers in Punjab and Haryana under the Aadi farmer carbon programme.

The payments were initiated through Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) at Punjab Agricultural University in Ludhiana. The programme, launched in 2019 by Grow Indigo with technical guidance from the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), covers farmers who adopted specified agricultural practices between 2019 and 2022.

Participating farmers adopted practices such as Direct Seeded Rice (DSR), reduced tillage and crop-residue management. The resulting reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions and increases in soil carbon were measured and independently verified before carbon credits were issued.

The programme has issued agricultural carbon credits under the Verra VM0042 methodology. The first issuance covered around 30,000 acres and more than 50,000 carbon credits, with participating farmers receiving approximately ₹3,000 to ₹15,000.

Grow Indigo released payments from its own funds before the carbon credits were fully sold. Farmers could choose between an assured upfront payment and receiving 75 per cent of the net carbon revenue after the credits were sold.

ICAR institutions provided scientific support for the programme, including greenhouse-gas accounting, crop-simulation modelling, soil-sampling protocols, device validation, field-team training, satellite imagery and remote sensing.

The wider Aadi programme now covers more than two million acres and over 100,000 farmers across seven states. Farmers enrolled after 2022 are part of the next monitoring cycle and will receive payments when their carbon credits are issued.

For fields enrolled between 2019 and 2022, the programme estimates 45 billion litres of water savings, more than two lakh tonnes of crop residue kept out of fires and around 1,000 tonnes of PM2.5 emissions avoided.

The first payments mark the disbursement of income to farmers based on verified soil-carbon gains under the programme. Grow Indigo said the payments were linked to the share of carbon credits generated from participating farmers’ fields.