By Dr. Vivek Saxena, IFS
For generations the Indian farmer has been paid for one thing only, the crop that leaves the field. Everything else the land produces; the carbon it stores, the water it holds, the air it cleans has been given away free and Society takes it for granted. Carbon farming changes that. For the first time, a farmer can be paid for what stays in the soil and recognition of farmer for Nature Based Solutions through carbon farming support and additional incentives.
A second income from the same acre
Carbon farming is a portfolio of practices; zero tillage, cover cropping, residue incorporation, natural farming, agroforestry on bunds and marginal land, biochar, direct-seeded rice and alternate wetting and drying, improved manure management, and restoration of degraded patches. Each of these either draws atmospheric carbon into soil and biomass or avoids emissions.
What matters for the farmer is that these are not new burdens. They are, for the most part, practices that already make agronomic sense and carbon revenue arrives as a payment layered on top of the existing crop cycle, not in place of it. The bund that carries a poplar line still carries wheat beside it. The field that stops burning straw still grows paddy.
Read also: Natural Farming: Why India Must Move From Heavy Fertiliser Subsidies to Smarter Farmer Incentives
What the farmer actually gains
Lower costs. Zero tillage cuts diesel and labour. Residue retention and better nutrient management reduce fertiliser dependence. These savings arrive in year one, before any credit is issued.
Better soil, steadier yields. Decades of rice–wheat monocropping have mined soil organic carbon well below its natural potential, leaving fields that hold less water, crust easily and demand ever more input for the same output. Rebuilding soil carbon is not an environmental favour to somebody else — it is the precondition for yield stability, moisture retention and survival through a bad monsoon.
A payment for what was previously a problem. Paddy straw has been a cost and a legal risk for the farmer. Under residue-linked carbon projects it becomes feedstock with a value.
Value from unproductive land. Bunds, field margins, saline patches, ravine edges and degraded commons carry little crop value today. Under agroforestry and restoration models they generate credits — and eventually timber, fruit or fodder.
A market that reaches small holdings. Carbon revenue flows through FPOs, cooperatives and panchayats, which means aggregation strengthens the very institutions that give small farmers bargaining power.
Why this moment is different
Two things have changed. First, the rules exist. The Energy Conservation (Amendment) Act, 2022 created the legal basis for a national carbon market, and the Carbon Credit Trading Scheme is being operationalised through 2025–26, with approved methodologies already covering afforestation of degraded land and methane recovery from livestock.
Second, verification can be affordable with AI enabled technological support. Measuring carbon on a two-hectare holding once cost more than the carbon was worth. Satellite remote sensing, drone-based biomass analytics, AI-driven crop classification and India’s own agri-stack and land-record digitisation have potential of significant and affordable reduction in cost. India’s fragmented landholding, long treated as a fatal obstacle, becomes the largest addressable market on earth.
The safeguards must follow: honest aggregators, transparent benefit-sharing, contracts the farmer can read, and no promise of returns that the market cannot pay. Get that right, and carbon becomes the first crop in Indian history that improves the field it is taken from.
(The author is former Principal Chief Conservator of Forest and Chief Wildlife Warden of Haryana Forest Department )
Read also: Science, Technology and the Soil: How India Is Transforming Agriculture for 2047
