One million carbon credits to cut methane emissions and save water

Every year, the world's rice paddies quietly release a staggering amount of methane into the atmosphere. Methane is a greenhouse gas with 85 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide: It is responsible for roughly a third of the warming we're already living through. Methane also breaks down in the atmosphere far quicker than carbon dioxide does, which means that methane abatement is an effective lever to limit near-term, peak warming.

Rice is also one of the thirstiest crops on the planet and much of it is grown in basins as 'extremely high' or 'high' baseline water stress.

This opportunity is exactly where Mitti Labs has spent the last three years, building a scalable model for the effective abatement of methane emissions and water savings in rice farming. This week, that work took a major step forward.

In one of the largest nature-based offtakes to date, Google has signed a four-year agreement to purchase 1 million carbon credits from Mitti Labs by 2030.

Traditional rice farming keeps paddies continuously flooded, which is exactly the condition methane-producing microbes need to thrive. Mitti Labs works directly with smallholder farmers to shift them toward Alternate Wetting and Drying (AWD), a practice that cuts methane emissions from rice fields by about 50% while also reducing irrigation water use by close to 40%, all without sacrificing yield. That last part matters enormously to a farmer deciding whether to change decades of practice. When water savings mean a shorter, less costly irrigation cycle and the crop comes in the same as always, a strong case makes itself.

What makes AWD scalable is the GeoAI platform we have built with support from NASA. Fusing high-resolution satellite radar with ground-truth data collected in the field, it lets us see crop health, soil moisture, and flooding status at the level of an individual smallholder plot, across enormous geographies at once.

That resolution is the difference between a program that can serve a few thousand farmers and one that can eventually map the world's millions of rice fields into detailed digital twins. It's also the foundation of the measurement rigor that earned Mitti Labs an "A" rating from Sylvera, one of the leading carbon credit ratings agencies.

By 2030, our partnership will cover more than 100,000 hectares and unlock 1.5 trillion liters of water savings, roughly the equivalent of three years of Bengaluru's entire water supply, across critical watersheds in India.

Our partnership will eliminate 3 millions tons of near-term warming impact in GWP20, equivalent to 1 millions tons of GWP100 impact.

“Google is committed to finding the most promising solutions that neutralize warming across both the near and long term. Mitti Labs' approach delivers critical near-term atmospheric impact by cutting methane emissions, while conserving billions of gallons of water and empowering smallholder farmers to deploy advanced water-management practices. We’re excited to partner with them to help accelerate and scale their solution across India."

Kate Brandt, Chief Sustainability Officer at Google

That adaptation opportunity matters just as much as reducing emissions. Roughly 150 million smallholder farmers grow the rice that feeds much of the planet, and many of them are already contending with erratic monsoons and shrinking groundwater. A farming practice that happens to cut both methane and water use isn't just a climate win, it's a hedge against the kind of water scarcity that will define the next few decades of agriculture in South and Southeast Asia.

“Reducing methane from rice farming is one of the most powerful levers we have to slow near-term warming. This partnership is a powerful accelerator of our mission to reduce emissions, save water, and strengthen the livelihoods of the 150 million smallholder farmers who grow one of the world’s most important food crops.''

Xavier Laguarta, Co-founder at Mitti Labs 

Since launching in 2023, Mitti Labs has already helped save 500 billion liters of water working with partners like Cool Effect, Ebro Foods, and Syngenta along the way. This new partnership with Google gives Mitti Labs the validation to keep expanding its satellite-driven approach across new geographies.

If the last three years were about proving our model works at the level of individual farms and fields, the next five are about proving it works at the scale the climate crisis actually demands.