How can smallholder farmers in India adopt more sustainable rice cultivation while still reducing costs and risks? And how do you monitor and verify those changes across thousands of tiny, fragmented plots where most farmers work less than an acre of land?

At a recent NTC Now session, we spoke with CarbonMint, an Indian company designing digital infrastructure for climate-resilient farming. Their Adapting to Climate Change in Rural Areas (ACRAT) project, developed with Fraunhofer University and a network of local partners, is building a monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) system that combines agronomy, digital tools, and blockchain-based records.

You can watch the full session below, or read on for a deep dive into how CarbonMint is layering technology and farmer engagement to make sustainable practices measurable and credible.

Shifting the Baseline in Rice Cultivation

Traditional rice transplantation is the dominant method across India. It requires fields to remain continuously flooded, consuming scarce irrigation water and producing high levels of methane. Methane is a greenhouse gas that is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

The ACRAT project pivots toward dry seeded rice cultivation. This approach reduces water use and lowers methane emissions. It also lessens dependence on government-managed irrigation. The method comes with challenges. Sowing is more labour intensive, and fields become more vulnerable to invasive weeds such as asar weed.

CarbonMint’s response is to work at the cluster level. Farmers are organised into cooperatives and self-help groups that pool resources. The costs of mechanised seeders are shared across the cluster. Partners such as Praanadhaara provide codified agronomy practices, which are digitised and adapted to local soil and water conditions. Coordinated adoption across a cluster helps reduce risk, share labour, and build consistency.

The approach also recognises social dynamics. In many communities, women provide the bulk of agricultural labour when men migrate to cities. The project intentionally includes women’s participation in training and decision-making, strengthening both adoption and equity.

Watch the NTC Now session with CarbonMint below:

The Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) System

CarbonMint has built a data pipeline that brings together multiple inputs and produces digital records that can be audited.

Data Capture

Mobile applications define plot boundaries, record evidence with GPS-stamped photographs, and log farmer activities.
Internet of Things devices, such as soil moisture sensors and solar-powered light traps, monitor conditions in the field while reducing pesticide use.
Drones capture spectral imagery to assess crop vigour, soil moisture, and pest pressures.
Satellite imagery, with 13 spectral bands at a 10-metre resolution every five days, provides consistent coverage for canopy and water-use monitoring.
Soil sampling by partners such as Krishi Tantra and Soil Sense creates baselines and calibrates imagery. Because farm plots are small and highly varied, with different soil histories and land-use patterns, baselines differ widely. Careful sampling and aggregation are needed to ensure credible verification across such heterogeneous landscapes.

Codification

Agronomy practices are digitised into structured “recipes” that guide sowing density, irrigation schedules, and pest management.
These are adapted to hyperlocal conditions so that they are relevant for each cluster of farms

Digital Records and Blockchain

Each farm has a digital twin that stores records of operations, inputs, and outputs.
Records are anchored in blockchain, making them tamper-proof and auditable.

Outputs

Farmers and cooperatives can track performance indicators such as water saved, emissions avoided, and changes in yields.
Buyers can scan QR codes on produce labels to access verified cultivation histories at the plot level.
Verified reductions in water use and methane emissions can be reported into India’s new carbon trading portal or integrated into corporate supply chain commitments.
Fraunhofer University’s decision support system consumes monitoring data to generate farmer-specific recommendations. This closes the loop by turning verified field data into adaptive guidance, ensuring that monitoring does not just report outcomes but actively informs better practices.

Hyperspectral Imaging for Soil Health

CarbonMint is working on hyperspectral imaging to shorten the cycle of soil carbon verification. Conventional methods require repeated soil sampling over many years, which is costly and slow.

The project combines hyperspectral drone data with soil calibration to develop spectral signatures of soil health. These signatures may provide early indicators of microbial activity and biodiversity, which are potential proxies for long-term soil carbon improvement. If validated, this method could make monitoring faster and less expensive while maintaining credibility.

Building Trust with Farmers

CarbonMint does not lead farmer engagement with promises of carbon credits. Instead, they focus on lowering production costs through shared mechanisation, reduced water use, and fewer chemical inputs. The use of solar-powered light traps, for example, replaces chemical pesticides and directly cuts costs.

Farmers typically begin by trialling dry seeded rice on a portion of their land. If results are positive, they expand adoption. Cooperatives and self-help groups reinforce learning, and exposure visits to larger demonstration farms help build trust.

A proposed next step is risk-sharing with financiers. Smallholders cannot afford to bear the risk of experimental practices that may fail in the short term, yet the benefits of success - improved yields, reduced costs, and carbon revenues, can be significant. Climate financiers could absorb potential losses if trials underperform, while sharing in the gains when outcomes are positive. This creates a fairer allocation of risk and reward, protecting farmers while making adoption more attractive for investors.

Carbon Finance as Icing on the Cake

India recently launched a national carbon trading portal. CarbonMint’s system is designed to feed into it, as well as into corporate insetting schemes. Yet registry-based carbon credits are costly and slow to generate. For that reason, CarbonMint treats carbon finance as “icing on the cake” rather than the main revenue source. The primary business case must rest on reduced input costs and better productivity at the farm level.

Lessons for the Nature Tech Community

The ACRAT project illustrates what it takes to build credible MRV in fragmented smallholder systems.

Cluster-level organisation makes mechanisation and digital tools affordable.
Multi-source monitoring, combining field sensors, drones, satellites, and soil testing, creates robust and verifiable data.
Blockchain provides an immutable record of practices and transactions, strengthening trust with buyers and markets.
Hyperspectral imaging holds promise for faster and cheaper soil monitoring.
Carbon finance can add value, but the system must first improve farmer economics directly.
Ecosystem partnerships are essential. Agronomy experts, IoT providers, drone operators, soil scientists, and financiers each supply critical modules. The system only works if they interoperate.

Two frontier issues stand out. The first is finance. Without risk-sharing mechanisms, farmers remain overexposed and adoption stalls. Models that protect farmers while engaging investors in upside benefits are critical. The second is baselines. Heterogeneous farm sizes and diverse land-use histories make verification costly and complex. Developing methods that balance credibility with practicality will be essential to scaling.

For the broader nature tech community, the lesson is clear. Monitoring and verification is not just about compliance or reporting. It is the enabling infrastructure for regenerative agriculture, and solving finance and baseline challenges will determine how far and how fast smallholder systems can transform.

Explore more of these technical insights by watching the full NTC Now session with CarbonMint.

Digital MRV for Smallholder Rice Cultivation: Insights from CarbonMint’s ACRAT Project