Photo Credit: Grow Indigo
The Punjab and Haryana payout is one of the first times an Indian company has converted farm carbon credits into cash for the farmers who earned them.
Agri-tech company Grow Indigo paid around 2,550 farmers in Punjab and Haryana this month. Individual payouts ranged from ₹3,000 to ₹15,000, covering more than 57,000 verified soil-carbon credits generated between 2019 and 2022.
The total came to over ₹2.9 crore, paid from Grow Indigo's own money because the credits have not yet been fully sold to buyers.
Key Facts
- Grow Indigo paid out over ₹2.9 crore to roughly 2,550 Punjab and Haryana farmers this month.
- The payout covers over 57,000 carbon credits generated through 2019-2022 rice and wheat practices.
- Because the credits were not yet fully sold, Grow Indigo funded the payments itself.
Almost all the participating farmers grow paddy and wheat in Punjab and Haryana. Umang Agarwal, Grow Indigo's chief operating officer for carbon, gave the figures to Business Standard.
Grow Indigo is a joint venture between Indian seed company Mahyco and US-based Indigo Ag. The underlying Aadi programme spans more than 2 million acres and over 100,000 farmers across seven states, an agriculture ministry official told The Tribune.
This first payout covers a narrow slice of that total.
How the Credits Were Generated and Verified
Farmers in the paying cohort adopted direct-seeded rice, reduced tillage, and crop-residue management between 2019 and 2022. This replaced the traditional practice of transplanting rice seedlings from a nursery.
The resulting drop in methane emissions and gain in soil carbon were measured and independently verified under Verra's VM0042 methodology. ICAR provided technical guidance for that verification. Only credits that cleared that verification were eligible for payment.
Photo by Grow Indigo
Across the 2019-22 period, the ministry credited these practices with saving 45 billion litres of water. Participating farmers also kept more than 200,000 tonnes of crop residue out of open fires, avoiding an estimated 1,000 tonnes of PM2.5 emissions.
Punjab's farm-fire incidents fell from more than 83,000 in 2020 to fewer than 5,000 in 2025. The ministry did not attribute that full decline to this programme alone.
Why Grow Indigo Paid Before Selling the Credits
The credits behind this payout were not fully sold to buyers when Grow Indigo made the payments, Agarwal said. Farmers had originally been promised 75% of net revenue once the credits were sold, but the process was taking longer than expected.
Grow Indigo responded by offering an immediate fixed one-time payment instead, and most farmers took it.
If Grow Indigo eventually sells the credits above what it already paid out, the difference becomes profit on the company's books. If it sells below that price, the difference becomes a loss.
The Payout's Place in a Larger National Programme
The payments were formally launched at an event at Punjab Agricultural University in Ludhiana. M L Jat, director general of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, initiated the transfers there.
The agriculture ministry describes Aadi as the first flagship farmer-carbon programme in India to issue agricultural carbon credits under the Verra VM0042 methodology.
Farmers who joined the programme after 2022 are part of a later monitoring cycle and have not yet been paid, according to the ministry. They will receive payments as their own credits are verified and issued.
