Punjab and Haryana Farmers Get First Soil Carbon Payments Under Verra VM0042

More than 2,500 smallholder farmers in Punjab and Haryana are receiving digital payments for carbon stored in their soil, marking a first for India. The payments come from the Aadi program run by Grow Indigo, with technical support from ICAR, and cover practices like direct seeded rice and residue management adopted between 2019 and 2022. The credits were issued under Verra's VM0042 methodology, with farmers choosing either an upfront payment or 75% of net carbon revenue after sale. The program estimates savings of 45 billion litres of water and over 200,000 tonnes of crop residue kept out of fires, avoiding roughly 1,000 tonnes of PM2.5 emissions. Punjab also saw a 93% drop in farm fires in 2025 compared to 2021. This is a concrete example of how measured and verified environmental outcomes can be linked to direct income for farmers, which is worth watching for scale beyond the current 30,000 acres enrolled.