nurture.farm, the digital platform for sustainable agriculture, has become the first company to generate and forward-sell agricultural-related carbon credits in India.
According to the report, the company’s alternate wetting and drying and dry seeded rice (AWD-DSR) project has generated 20,000 carbon credits for methane reduction.
The AWD-DSR project, that covered 22,000 acres of paddy fields and involved 2,500 small holder farmers, forms a crucial part of nutrure.farm’s mission to transition farmers to adopt sustainable agricultural practices and reduce the environmental impact of rice cultivation. Benefits from the project included 15-30 per cent of water savings, the company said in a statement.
Another 1.2 lakh carbon credits are under process from the crop residue management (CRM), a programme that empowered over 25,000 farmers to prevent 4.2 lakh acres of farmland being burnt, thereby preventing generation of 2,135 tonnes of particulate matter, including PM 2.5 and PM 10.
The AWD-DSR programme is now being submitted to a global validation agency and in two quarters’ time to the Verified Carbon Standard (Verra) for final verification and credit generation. The CRM programme will follow suit, with submission to the validation agency in the next quarter.
In the rabi cropping season, nurture.farm expanded the AWD-DSR programme to an additional 1.2 lakh acres and the company plans to create more carbon credits by further expanding its projects. In 2022, nurture.farm’s CRM project will cover at least one million acres, while it will scale up its AWD-DSR project to 1.8 lakh acres. nurture.farm said it has set a target to help Indian farmers generate one million carbon credits by 2023.
Dhruv Sawhney, Business Head & COO of nurture.farm, said “India is well-placed to pioneer agriculture-related carbon credits’ trading. India is the world’s second-largest producer of key staples including rice, wheat, fruit and vegetables, and agriculture is the primary source of livelihood for over 50 per cent of the population. And yet, India is also the world’s third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases.”