PIB TrackerRs 2.9 crore reaches 2,550 farmers for carbon they stored four years ago
India's first soil carbon payments were released at Ludhiana. The first issuance covers about 30,000 acres of a programme enrolling more than two million, and pays for practices adopted between 2019 and 2022.
What happened
- Dr M. L. Jat, Secretary DARE and Director General ICAR, initiated a Direct Benefit Transfer to 2,550 farmers of Punjab and Haryana at Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana.
- Over Rs 2.9 crore is being disbursed under Aadi, a Grow Indigo farmer carbon programme launched in 2019 with ICAR technical guidance.
- Credits were issued under the Verra VM0042 methodology after measurement and independent verification of practices adopted between 2019 and 2022.
- The first issuance covered about 30,000 acres and more than 50,000 carbon credits, paying roughly Rs 3,000 to Rs 15,000 per farmer.
- Punjab recorded 5,114 farm-fire incidents in the 2025 paddy season, a 93 per cent fall against 2021 and 90 per cent against 2022.
For Prelims
- Verra VM0042: the methodology for improved agricultural land management under which these agricultural carbon credits were issued - a voluntary market standard, not a compliance one.
- Direct Seeded Rice (DSR): sowing paddy directly rather than transplanting nursery seedlings into puddled fields; it cuts irrigation demand and is one of the three paid practices.
- Aadi: the Grow Indigo farmer carbon programme, launched 2019, covering over two million acres and 100,000 farmers across seven states.
- Payment options: farmers chose between an assured upfront payment and 75 per cent of net carbon revenue after the credits were sold.
- Estimated co-benefits, 2019-22 enrolled fields: 45 billion litres of water, over two lakh tonnes of residue kept from burning, about 1,000 tonnes of PM2.5 avoided.
- Punjab farm fires: 5,114 incidents in the 2025 paddy season, the lowest under the present monitoring framework - 93 per cent below 2021.
- Ransinh Kalan, Moga: a village that has held 100 per cent residue-burning-free status across 1,310 acres for six consecutive years.
- BRICS link: the 16th BRICS Agriculture Ministers' Meeting (Indore, June 2026, India chairing) agreed a Network of Centres of Excellence on Agroecology and Regenerative Agriculture, coordinated initially by ICAR-IIFSR, Modipuram.
For UPSC: The first Indian instance of an environmental service paid for at the farm gate rather than mandated or subsidised. Use it on carbon markets and MRV, on stubble burning and the Punjab-Haryana water table, and on whether payment for ecosystem services can substitute for regulation.
What it is NOT: The release does not say the payments are recurring, nor what a farmer earns per acre per year on a settled basis. The Rs 3,000 to Rs 15,000 is a one-time receipt for four to seven years of practice, and the first issuance reached about 30,000 of more than two million enrolled acres, so roughly one and a half per cent of the programme has been paid. It does not name the buyers of the credits or the price realised, and the water, residue and PM2.5 figures are programme estimates for enrolled fields, not independently verified outcomes.
For Mains
Syllabus: GS3.14 · GS3.4 · Linkage L2
Anchor
India has regulated stubble burning, penalised it, subsidised the machinery that avoids it and litigated it before the Supreme Court. On 17 September it paid for the alternative instead. The instrument changed from prohibition to price, and that change is the reason the event matters more than its modest sum.
Substantiation (data)
Rs 2.9 crore went to 2,550 farmers against roughly 30,000 acres and more than 50,000 credits issued under Verra VM0042, after independent verification of Direct Seeded Rice, reduced tillage and residue management practised from 2019 to 2022. Individual receipts ran from about Rs 3,000 to Rs 15,000.
Exemplification
Ransinh Kalan in Moga village has kept 1,310 acres entirely free of residue burning for six consecutive years, and Punjab as a whole logged 5,114 farm fires in the 2025 paddy season against a 93 per cent higher figure in 2021. The behaviour being paid for is already demonstrable at village scale.
Problematisation
The lag is the problem. Farmers changed practice in 2019 and were paid in 2026, and the money arrived only because Grow Indigo advanced it from its own funds before the credits sold. An incentive that reaches the field four to seven years after the decision it is meant to influence is a reward, not an incentive.
Comparison
Set coverage against payment. The programme enrols more than two million acres and over 100,000 farmers in seven states; the first issuance covered about 30,000 acres and 2,550 farmers. Roughly one and a half per cent of the enrolled area has been paid, which places this at the demonstration stage rather than the market stage.
Conclusion
Voluntary carbon markets carry a well-known additionality problem: paying for what would have happened anyway. Here the co-benefits are physical and local - 45 billion litres of water and cleaner Delhi air in November - so the case does not rest on the credit alone. That is the stronger argument, and it is the one an answer should make.
Deploys into: Carbon markets and payment for ecosystem services · Stubble burning and air quality in the NCR · Sustainable agriculture and groundwater depletion · Climate finance reaching smallholders
Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare · 2026-09-17 · PRID 2311218 · PIB source ↗