Google Bets on Flooded Rice Fields to Cut Methane, in Largest Deal of Its Kind

Somewhere in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, or Telangana, a rice farmer is about to change how long water sits in their fields. That small shift, multiplied across roughly 100,000 hectares, is now part of Google's climate strategy. It is a reminder that some of the most consequential fights against climate change are happening not in server rooms or boardrooms, but in flooded paddies where farmers have grown rice the same way for generations.

Google has agreed to buy 1 million carbon credits from Mitti Labs, an Indian climate-tech startup, through 2030. The companies describe it as the largest publicly announced deal to date for credits tied to reducing methane emissions from rice farming. Financial terms were not disclosed, but the scale alone marks a shift in how corporate climate spending is finding its way into rural India.

Here is why rice matters so much to the climate conversation. Flooded rice fields create ideal conditions for bacteria that produce methane, a greenhouse gas that traps far more heat than carbon dioxide over a short time horizon, even though it breaks down faster in the atmosphere. Think of methane as a bonfire compared to carbon dioxide's slow-burning coal: it burns hotter and faster, but doesn't linger as long. Cutting it quickly is one of the more effective near-term levers we have for slowing warming.

Mitti Labs' approach is straightforward in concept, even if it took years of fieldwork to prove out. Farmers are paid to reduce how long their fields stay flooded during the growing season. Less standing water means less of the oxygen-starved environment that methane-producing microbes need. According to the company, the technique cuts methane emissions by roughly half and reduces irrigation water use by about 40%, without hurting crop yields. Over the past two years, Mitti Labs says its projects have saved more than 500 billion liters of water, a figure that matters enormously in a country where groundwater depletion threatens long-term food security.

How the Deal Came Together

Talks between Google and Mitti Labs began roughly a year ago, according to co-founder Xavier Laguarta, as Google looked to diversify its carbon-credit portfolio beyond forestry and industrial capture projects. The water savings were a significant draw, Laguarta told TechCrunch, as was Mitti Labs' ability to operate at the scale a company like Google requires.

Before signing, Google put the startup through what Laguarta called rigorous due diligence, including farm visits and scrutiny of its monitoring technology. That technology is the backbone of Mitti Labs' credibility claim. Founded in 2023 and based in New York and Bengaluru, the company built a GeoAI platform that layers satellite radar imagery over field-level measurements to track crop growth, soil moisture, and flooding across smallholder farms remotely. It draws on synthetic aperture radar from commercial and public satellites, with resolution as fine as 50 centimeters, and combines that with proprietary field data to train its models.

That matters because carbon credits have a trust problem. Critics have long questioned whether credits generated from agricultural or forestry projects represent real, additional, and permanent emissions cuts, or whether they simply let big buyers claim progress on paper. Mitti Labs says its credits are certified through Gold Standard or Isometric, two established verification bodies, and go through independent third-party review before issuance. Laguarta framed Google's involvement as a credibility signal in itself. "Having Google, one of the most sophisticated buyers in the market with rigorous due diligence processes, is obviously a good signal for us," he said.

The deal is also a response to pressure Google is under at home. The company's 2025 environmental report shows greenhouse gas emissions rose 18% year-over-year to about 14.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, driven largely by the buildout of AI infrastructure. That growth sits uneasily against Google's public pledge to reach net-zero emissions by 2030. Buying credits from methane-reduction projects will not solve that tension on its own, but it does show Google reaching for every lever available, including ones far removed from data centers and chips.

For Mitti Labs, the agreement is transformative. It is the startup's largest offtake deal to date, and Laguarta said it will help fund expansion toward the company's goal of working with millions of farmers by 2030. The startup currently partners with more than 100,000 farmers and counts Cool Effect, Ebro Foods, and Syngenta among its other clients. It plans to expand beyond India into the Philippines later this year, then into Indonesia and other Southeast Asian markets in 2027. Laguarta pointed to roughly 150 million rice farmers across India, Southeast Asia, and China as evidence of how much room this market still has to grow.

A majority of project revenue goes to farming communities, Laguarta said, though he declined to specify how much individual farmers in the Google deal would receive. That gap in transparency is worth watching. Carbon credit programs live or die on whether the people doing the actual work of emissions reduction see a fair share of the payout, and vague assurances about "majority" splits leave plenty of room for disappointment down the line.

This is not Google's first foray into Indian carbon markets. In January 2025, the company bought 100,000 tons of carbon credits from Gurugram-based Varaha, in what was then the largest biochar-based carbon removal deal in the country. Google has also expanded its clean-energy footprint in India, recently signing an agreement tied to a 150-megawatt solar project in Rajasthan that brings its contracted solar capacity with developer ReNew in the state to 300 megawatts.

Why It Matters

Rice feeds more than half the world's population, and the fields that grow it are a significant, often overlooked source of methane. Programs like Mitti Labs' offer a rare win-win: lower emissions, less water strain, and steady income for farmers who often operate on thin margins. But the credibility of carbon credits still hinges on rigorous verification and fair compensation, not just corporate press releases. If Google's purchase pushes more farmers toward water-saving practices while genuinely cutting emissions, it could become a template other companies follow. If the payoff for farmers turns out to be thin, or the emissions math doesn't hold up under scrutiny, it risks becoming another example of climate spending that looks good on paper but falls short in the field.