Google commits most promising solutions to neutralize warming across near- and long-term
Deep-tech company Mitti Labs today announced a major five-year carbon credit agreement with Google to scale climate-smart agriculture across 100,000 hectares of smallholder rice farms in India. The announcement follows Mitti Labs’ recent funding round showing an increase in momentum for using agriculture as a climate solution.
By transitioning over 70,000 farmers to water and methane-savings irrigation practices, this partnership aims to eliminate 3M tons of near-term warming impact (GWP20, equivalent to 1M tons of GWP100 impact) while conserving billions of gallons of water across critical regional basins.
Methane is a ‘super-pollutant’, a short-lived but potent greenhouse gas that is human-caused and responsible for roughly one third of climate warming to date. Because methane breaks down in the atmosphere in a decade, cutting its emissions today is a direct path to reducing acute near-term warming.
“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,” said Kate Brandt, Chief Sustainability Officer at Google.
Rice paddies, continuously flooded under traditional farming practices, are among the largest human-induced sources of methane, accounting for more than 10% of global methane emissions. Mitti Labs has pioneered a model that combines deep engagement in farming communities with the most advanced satellite radar technology to drive a low-cost, science-backed, and rapidly scalable shift to alternate irrigation practices. This shift cuts up to 50% of methane emissions from rice fields and reduces irrigation volumes by close to 40% while maintaining rice yields.
In addition to large-scale methane reduction, the partnership is projected to deliver billions in liters of water savings across the country — the equivalent of Bengaluru’s annual supply for three years — and establish a new standard in leveraging satellite technology towards water-efficient rice farming practices.
Mitti Labs’ GeoAI platform, developed with support from NASA, fuses high-resolution satellite radar data with field-collected ground truth to generate field-level insights on crop health, soil moisture, and flooding at the resolution of individual smallholder plots.
“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, said on 10 Sept in a release.
With this support from Google, Mitti Labs will continue to leverage the latest in AI crop modelling and radar technology to expand the capabilities of its GeoAI platform, eventually mapping the millions of rice fields across the world into ‘digital twins’ datasets. These datasets are a blueprint for growing more rice with less water, a key for adapting to a drier climate for millions of smallholder farmers.
Since launching in 2023, Mitti Labs has scaled to deliver the largest alternate irrigation program globally. The company has received an ”A” rating for its methane-based credits from ratings agency Sylvera in recognition of its rigorous implementation and measurement protocols.
Mitti Labs combines satellite technology, AI and field operations to create a water and climate resilient future for rice farming. To date, its programs have saved 500 billion liters of water — the equivalent of Bengaluru’s annual supply. Customers include global technology, service, food and agriculture businesses such as Cool Effect, Ebro Foods, and Syngenta. Since launching in 2023, Mitti Labs has grown to 150 employees and secured $12.5 million from investors such as Lightspeed India, Aramco Ventures, Voyager Ventures, Godrej Industries Group, Cisco Foundation, Francis Family Fund, and Volta Circle. Fiinews.com
