The Problem with Rice

by Xavi Laguarta, Co-founder at Mitti Labs

Ask an environmentalist about the worst foods for the planet and they’ll probably list beef and almond milk as a starting point. But there’s another ‘problem crop’ in the food industry, and it feeds 3.5 billion people daily.

It’s rice. Perhaps because it is primarily grown in developing countries, rice has flown under the sustainability radar. While the US and Europe are leading on climate and environmental policy, rice is typically grown in countries like India and Southeast Asia, where national concerns like food security and infrastructure investments tend to take priority over greenhouse gas emissions. But rice has a carbon footprint the size of the aviation industry (close to 1Gt annually, accounting for approximately 1.5% of global emissions) and places a close second — after beef — for negative environmental impact.

Most people understand how cows produce methane, but what makes rice so GHG-intensive? The stereotypical image of rice farming is of a field flooded with water. This is how rice has been farmed for thousands of years, and to date, it has been effective. Flooding a rice field stops atmospheric oxygen from reaching soil, creating the ideal conditions for bacteria that ferment soil organic matter anaerobically, producing methane as a byproduct. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, with a warming effect about 84X that of CO2 over a 20-year time frame.

Traditional rice farming is not just methane-intensive; it’s also water-intensive. In countries like India, where millions of farmers depend on rice for their livelihoods, this is increasingly a problem, as climate-induced droughts have left farmers with very little water to work with, driving many to extreme ends, including suicide.

And while there are several new developments in the world of carbon reduction and removal, very few people are talking about — and working to solve — the methane problem.

What can we do about it? 

While traditional methods are deeply rooted in farming communities, innovative practices are emerging to address these environmental challenges. Currently, there are only fledgling ‘methane removal’ projects underway; the most viable option in the short term is to reduce existing methane emissions by changing the way practices like rice farming have traditionally been conducted. Several companies are working on helping farmers adopt new practices, including Bayer, Nurture.farm, Rize, and of course, ourselves at Mitti Labs.

Traditional rice farming involves plowing the ‘paddy’ field (rice field) to prepare the soil, flooding the field, and then planting rice seedlings, which are grown in nurseries by the field before being transplanted into the wet fields. The paddies typically stay flooded for four months before the rice is harvested.

Photo: Irrigated rice field in Andhra Pradesh

Alternative practices include:

• Alternate wetting and drying (AWD): periodically drying and re-flooding fields (rather than continuous flooding). This reduces water requirements, as water is only needed for flooding on some days of the season (rather than all). It also reduces total methane emissions as soil can dry out between floodings, which increases oxygen penetration, creating an aerobic environment, rather than an anaerobic one (which produces methane).

• Direct-seeded rice (DSR): directly seeding rice into the main field (when dry) as opposed to growing it in nurseries and then transplanting into flooded fields. This means fields stay dry for a greater portion of the season, reducing water requirements and methane emissions via the same mechanisms mentioned above. It also reduces labor requirements by cutting out another step of the rice-growing process (nursery cultivation).

• Rice stubble management: typically, the rice ‘stubble’ (the ‘stalk’ part of the rice plant) that is left over after harvest is burned. This burning produces harmful smoke and GHG emissions, contributing to rice’s carbon footprint and also harming local air quality. With better rice stubble management, stubble can be converted to biochar and applied to fields. Biochar is another form of carbon removal, which could translate to further revenue from carbon credits. Applying biochar to fields acts as a kind of natural soil-enriching fertilizer, improving soil health and water-holding capacity.

These farming practices drastically reduce methane emissions (by over 40%) and allow farmers to farm with far less water (30% less). In India’s drought-stricken climate, low-water farming practices are no longer a nice-to-have but a necessary survival adaptation. And contrary to typical thinking around traditional practices, these novel agricultural techniques don’t affect crop yield.

Photo: Sustainable farming training session for farmers in Odisha

Moving the VCM forward 

The number of people who rely on rice, both for their income and their daily sustenance, is growing — so it’s a problem that needs to be addressed quickly and at scale. To address the rice problem globally, it’s critical to zoom in on the farmer level and focus on providing farmers with easily actionable techniques that solve multiple problems (water, methane) and improve livelihoods.

Mitti Labs was started because we believed that the ‘problem’ of rice methane emissions was just an opportunity in disguise: a way to upgrade rice farming to help farmers reduce emissions, farm with less water, and build more resilient businesses with additional income from carbon credits.

Photo: Irrigation pipe demonstration with farmers in Andhra Pradesh

Rice methane projects have so much potential to reduce methane emissions permanently, change the lives of farmers in developing countries, and offer corporate buyers a high-integrity point of diversification (one with plenty of co-benefits) to their carbon portfolios.

For rice methane projects to become a viable carbon credit option for corporate buyers, the rice methane project ‘market’ needs to rapidly improve in quality and transparency. Some readers may know that rice methane credits in other countries were discovered to be of questionable integrity due to accounting loopholes and additionality concerns, leading Verra to inactivate its methodology.

With recent advances in dMRV technology and a renewed focus on methodology by carbon credit registries, the standards for rice methane methodologies are improving. For example, Verra is currently reviewing its rice methane methodology to incorporate the latest scientific research and technology updates, while Gold standard launched its updated methodology in late 2023. By increasing transparency, quality, and trust, we can rewrite the narrative on rice methane projects.

In the near future, we believe rice methane projects will become trusted favorites of carbon credit buyers and a high-integrity, high-impact source of portfolio diversification. If we can channel carbon credit finance to the rice farmers who most need it, we can change the lives of these farmers and communities, and contribute to a new, low-methane agricultural sector.

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