Deep-tech developer Mitti Labs has executed a five-year carbon credit offtake agreement with Salesforce to expand climate-smart rice cultivation practices across smallholder farms in India.

Under the contract, Salesforce will purchase 500,000 high-integrity methane reduction credits by 2030. The deal follows a similar corporate purchasing agreement with Google, reflecting growing voluntary market demand for data-backed agricultural credits targeting non-CO2 climate pollutants.

Agriculture accounts for 40% of human-induced global methane emissions. The project targets alternate wetting and drying techniques, a low-cost operational shift where farmers replace continuous paddy flooding with periodic drying intervals. The practice reduces microbial methane production in oxygen-starved soils, cutting methane emissions by up to 50% and water consumption by up to 40% without compromising crop yields.

To satisfy buyer integrity requirements, credit issuance is audited through Mitti Labs’ proprietary GeoAI platform. 

Developed in collaboration with NASA, the remote sensing infrastructure merges field data with high-resolution satellite radar to track soil moisture, flood levels, and crop health across individual smallholder plots, verifying field dry-down cycles at scale.

The operational transition is projected to save 700 billion liters of irrigation water, reducing pressure on regional aquifers in agrarian hubs competing with industrial and urban demand.

“Superpollutant reduction is one of the best ways to slow near-term warming, and we are committed to directing capital toward high-impact mitigation efforts,” said Jamila Yamani, Director of Climate & Energy at Salesforce.

Mitti Labs is scaling its project pipeline across India and Southeast Asia to meet institutional market demand, targeting an annual issuance of 2 million satellite-verified methane credits by 2028.

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