More than 2,500 smallholder farmers in Punjab and Haryana are receiving digital payments for adopting regenerative practices — the first reported instance in India of farmers being paid for carbon stored in their soil. The direct benefit transfer for 2,550 farmers was initiated by Dr M. L. Jat, secretary of DARE and director general of ICAR, at a programme at Punjab Agricultural University in Ludhiana.

The payments belong to 'Aadi', a Grow Indigo farmer carbon programme launched in 2019 with ICAR's technical guidance, under which farmers adopted direct-seeded rice, reduced tillage and crop-residue management between 2019 and 2022; the resulting greenhouse-gas reductions and soil-carbon gains were measured and independently verified before credits were issued under the Verra VM0042 methodology. The programme covers more than two million acres and over 100,000 farmers in seven states.

The first issuance covers about 30,000 acres and more than 50,000 carbon credits, with participating farmers receiving roughly Rs 3,000 to Rs 15,000 according to their share of the credits generated on their fields. Grow Indigo released the money from its own funds before the credits were fully sold; farmers could choose an assured upfront payment or 75% of net carbon revenue after sale, and those who joined after 2022 will be paid as the next monitoring cycle issues credits.

For the enrolled fields in 2019–2022 the programme estimates 45 billion litres of water saved and more than two lakh tonnes of residue kept out of fires, avoiding an estimated 1,000 tonnes of PM2.5. Punjab recorded 5,114 farm-fire incidents in the 2025 paddy harvest, the lowest since monitoring began — 93% below 2021 — and the village of Ransinh Kalan in Moga has stayed residue-burning-free across 1,310 acres for six years.

Dr Jat said the initiative shows how climate-smart practices backed by scientific assessment and rigorous verification can create income for smallholders while conserving water and improving air quality; Dr Usha Barwale Zehr, Grow Indigo's executive director, thanked farmers for their patience through the multi-year verification. ICAR institutes contributed greenhouse-gas accounting, crop modelling, soil-sampling protocols and remote sensing, and the 16th BRICS agriculture ministers' meeting in Indore in June agreed a BRICS network of centres of excellence on agroecology and regenerative agriculture coordinated by ICAR-IIFSR, Modipuram.

Source: Global Agriculture