Mitti Labs partners with Salesforce to scale the Climate-smart future of rice

Just weeks after the announcement of our multi-year partnership with Google, we are proud to share that a second global technology company is backing Mitti Labs to scale Climate-smart rice.

Salesforce has signed a five-year agreement to purchase 500,000 high-integrity methane reduction credits from Mitti Labs by 2030.

The partnership will scale Climate-smart rice farming across tens of thousands of smallholder farms in India. Coming on the heels of our agreement with Google, it signals that AWD has reached a turning point. The technology to monitor adoption at scale now exists. Carbon credit buyers are ready to back it. And the need for climate adaptation pathways has never been more urgent.

Agriculture is responsible for around 40% of all human-induced methane emissions, and flooded rice paddies are one of its largest sources. Methane traps about 85 times more heat than CO₂ but stays in the atmosphere for only around a decade. That means every tonne not emitted today delivers a fast, tangible cut in near-term warming.

Rice is also one of the thirstiest crops on the planet. Across much of India, it competes for groundwater resources with growing cities and industry.

Most rice is grown in continuously flooded paddies. With no oxygen in the soil, methane-producing microbes thrive. Climate-smart rice farming replaces continuous flooding with alternate irrigation: farmers let their fields dry out during safe windows in the growing cycle.

The shift is low-cost, and the results are significant. Alternate irrigation can cut methane emissions by up to 50% and water use by up to 40%, without affecting yields.

Credit buyers increasingly ask to see tangible, measurable proof of emission reduction when partnering with project developers. Every credit delivered under the Salesforce agreement will be backed by field-level evidence and satellite-verified field dry-downs.

That evidence comes from our GeoAI platform, developed with support from NASA. It fuses high-resolution satellite radar with ground truth collected in the field to track flooding, soil moisture and crop health on individual smallholder plots. The result is transparent, independently verifiable proof of impact at a scale that manual monitoring can't match. The same measurement rigor earned Mitti Labs an "A" rating from Sylvera in July 2026 and another 'A' rating from BeZero this October.

By 2030, the partnership is projected to save 700 billion liters of water, roughly eighteen months of Bengaluru's supply, easing pressure on groundwater in regions where rice farming competes with cities and industry.

For India's smallholder farmers, some of whom already face changing monsoons patterns and falling water tables, that makes climate-smart rice as much an adaptation strategy as a climate solution.

"Salesforce is a founding member of the Beyond Alliance's Superpollutant Action Initiative. We know that superpollutant reduction is one of the best ways to slow near-term warming, and we are committed to directing capital toward high-impact mitigation efforts. Reducing methane emissions from rice farming is a scalable climate solution that also helps preserve water resources for future generations." Jamila Yamani, PhD, Director of Climate & Energy at Salesforce

Salesforce's commitment builds on a growing base of partners, including Google, Cool Effect, Ebro Foods and Syngenta. To meet that demand, Mitti Labs plans to issue 2 million credits per year by 2028 from projects in India and Southeast Asia.

"Carbon credit buyers are increasingly asking not just what impact a project delivers, but how they can see it for themselves. Having Salesforce join Google in backing rice methane reductions shows that high-integrity, data-verified agricultural credits are becoming a core part of serious climate offsetting strategies. This agreement lets us reach tens of thousands more farmers with practices that cut emissions, save water and strengthen livelihoods." Xavier Laguarta, Co-founder at Mitti Labs

With Salesforce's support, we will deepen our work with rice farming communities and expand the "digital twin" datasets behind our programs. As demand for the world's staple crop grows and rainfall becomes less predictable, the next four years are a chance to strengthen food security and show what rice farming can do for the climate.

Two of the world's largest technology companies have now backed rice methane reduction within weeks of each other. The case for Climate-smart rice is no longer being made one field at a time.