Mitti Labs Uses AI and Partnerships to Help Rice Farmers Cut Methane Emissions

Combating climate change is a monumental challenge, as carbon removal developers like Mitti Labs know well. The New York-based startup has built technology that measures methane emissions from rice paddies and uses those insights to train hundreds of thousands of farmers in climate-friendly practices. It is a labor-intensive, high-touch approach that venture capitalists often shy away from. Yet Mitti has secured funding from investors, largely by forging strategic partnerships.

Mitti recently announced a collaboration with The Nature Conservancy to promote regenerative, no-burn agriculture, the startup exclusively told TechCrunch. The deal is the latest in a series of partnerships that extend the company’s reach. Under the agreement, Mitti will deploy its AI-powered models to measure, report, and verify the work of the nonprofit’s field staff in India, where they help farmers adopt a range of climate-friendly practices.

“Most of the project operations on the ground are from locals from the villages where these projects are being implemented,” said Xavier Laguarta, Mitti’s co-founder. While the company’s primary operations focus on developing projects that reduce methane generated by rice farming, it is also expanding its software offerings for third parties. “We can measure Scope 3 emissions from other project developers or corporations that are working with rice farmers,” Laguarta explained, referring to emissions that an organization does not directly control. “Anyone who’s already running projects on the ground, that’s sort of like a SaaS solution that we can offer them.”

Mitti is not alone in chasing the SaaS partnership model. Mati Carbon, which recently won the Xprize Carbon grand prize, develops measurement, reporting, and verification software for enhanced rock weathering—a process in which minerals spread on farm fields both remove carbon and fertilize the soil.

Methane reduction projects generate carbon credits, which Mitti tracks using its software. The company takes a percentage of the credit sales and passes the remainder on to farmers and their communities. “Usually, farmers will see about a 15% improvement in their bottom line by joining our programs,” Laguarta said. For smallholder farmers, who often operate on the edge of profitability, such additional revenue can be significant.

Mitti’s software analyzes various signals from rice farms to estimate how much methane the fields release throughout the growing season. Rice farming is distinct from many other types of agriculture because the fields are flooded for much of the year. This creates anaerobic, or oxygen-free, conditions in the soil, which foster the growth and metabolism of microbes that generate methane.

Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, warming the planet 82 times more than an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. Rice farming is a major source of human-caused methane emissions, contributing roughly 10% to 12% of the total.

Mitti’s primary data sources come from satellite imagery and radar, which can penetrate clouds, plants, water, and soil to determine what is happening underground where the microbes live. The company feeds that information into AI models trained on satellite data and the results of extensive field studies.

Smallholder farmers play a large role in agriculture in India; the average farm size is one hectare (about 2.5 acres). Monitoring each plot with physical equipment would be cost-prohibitive. Remotely sensed data helps keep verification costs reasonable, and partnerships help bring climate-friendly practices to millions of farmers.

“Ninety percent of rice is grown in Asia, and outside of potentially China, the majority of rice growing regions have these similar smallholder farmer dynamics,” Laguarta said. “A deep partnership that we have with the Nature Conservancy allows us to develop these tools that can then be used for a lot of other programs in the region.”