First market

Rice carbon credits in India: AWD at smallholder scale

India grows rice on roughly 44 million hectares—majority smallholder, average holding near one hectare, under heavy monsoon cover. It is the hardest version of the MRV problem, and the right place to start.

Last updated August 2026

Area figures follow FAO / national rice statistics. Irrigated tracts where Alternate Wetting and Drying is feasible are a subset; rainfed systems are largely out of scope. That feasibility filter—not headline hectares—defines the serviceable market for rice methane MRV.

Why India breaks optical MRV

Kharif rice coincides with monsoon cloud. Optical pipelines go blind for weeks. Sentinel-1 C-band SAR flood mapping is the workable remote observation. Combine with sparse water-level sensors and plot-level uncertainty.

Buyers and developers

India hosts active rice carbon project developers and aggregators. We sell verification to that ecosystem—see MRV for project developers and FPOs—not a claim that the field is empty.

Registry-ready verification, independent of origination. Measure a district with us.