Google Backs Telangana Rice Farmers With Methane-Credit Purchase

Google is partnering with Mitti Labs to help rice farmers in Telangana adopt a different irrigation routine: periodically draining and reflooding paddies instead of keeping them continuously flooded. Google says the program is expected to cut methane emissions and irrigation demand while paying participating farmers, turning a change in field management into a source of carbon credits.

Changing the conditions beneath a rice field

The practice is called Alternate Wetting and Drying, or AWD. Rice fields are commonly kept flooded, but Mitti’s program asks farmers to drain and later reflood them. Google says that interrupts the soil conditions that generate methane while lowering the need for irrigation water.

The program is expected to reach tens of thousands of smallholder farmers, according to Google. Mitti combines the practice change with direct payments to participants. Its verification approach uses NASA-enabled satellite-based monitoring alongside an on-the-ground network that measures the project’s impact and supports farmers as they adopt AWD.

Google estimates that, once fully implemented, the initiative could conserve billions of gallons of water across regional basins in India while maintaining crop productivity. Those are expected outcomes, not results reported from the project.

Why the accounting period changes the result

Mitti’s two estimates reflect different ways of looking at methane. Its 20-year measure gives more weight to methane’s stronger warming effect in the near term; the conventional 100-year measure produces the lower figure. The project’s credited impact therefore depends on the time horizon used.

Google says that if it uses the credits to counterbalance emissions, it will match them against shorter-lived emissions in its own footprint or replace them with carbon removals as their atmospheric impact expires.