Google signs its biggest rice-methane carbon credit deal with Indian startup Mitti Labs

Google has contracted to buy 1 million carbon credits from Mitti Labs under a four-year supply agreement that runs through 2030, according to the startup. Mitti Labs said the project will span rice fields across three Indian states and could reach roughly 100,000 hectares at peak delivery, making it the largest publicly disclosed deal so far for credits tied to cutting methane from rice cultivation.

Mitti Labs supports farmers in shifting management practices to shorten the period that rice paddies remain flooded, a change the company says can halve methane emissions and cut irrigation water use by about 40% without lowering yields. The startup reports its projects have conserved more than 500 billion liters of water over the past two years, and it plans to use proceeds from the deal to scale operations and reach more growers.

The New York- and Bengaluru-based firm, founded in 2023, combines satellite synthetic aperture radar imagery with field measurements and proprietary data to monitor flooding, soil moisture and crop growth across smallholder plots. Mitti Labs told TechCrunch that Google conducted due diligence on the monitoring technology and made farm visits before finalizing the purchase; credits to be sold can be issued under Gold Standard or Isometric after independent third-party verification.

Mitti Labs currently works with over 100,000 farmers and aims to expand into the Philippines later this year and into Indonesia and other Southeast Asian markets in 2027. The startup counts clients and partners such as Cool Effect, Ebro Foods and Syngenta, and says most project revenue flows back to farming communities. The Google agreement is Mitti’s largest offtake deal to date and follows Google’s prior carbon activities in India, including a January 2025 purchase of 100,000 tons of credits from Varaha and contracts tied to solar projects in Rajasthan.