Rice is a staple crop for more than half the world’s population. Demand is growing as the populations of South and Southeast Asia grow. However, much of the rice industry still relies on traditional methods that produce significant methane emissions, which have a major impact on climate change. Methane is about 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide in warming the atmosphere, but it dissipates more quickly. Rice cultivation requires significant amounts of freshwater: about 3,000 litres per kilogram of rice, or 20 million litres per hectare of rice farm.
Mitti Labs aims to use technology solutions to limit methane emissions and water waste in rice farming. Co-founded by Harvard Business School graduates Xavier Laguarta and Devdut Dalal, the company has raised $3 million in equity investment, using high-resolution satellite imagery and technologies such as ground-based gas chambers to reduce methane emissions by 50 percent and water consumption by 30 percent.
The New York-based startup, which has a subsidiary in Bengaluru, India, launched in May last year and has chosen India as its primary market. India is the world’s second-largest rice producer, but the livelihoods of rice farmers face imminent threats from climate change, which has resulted in significantly reduced water levels and increased methane in the atmosphere.
Laguarta and Dalal conceived Mitti Labs last year after meeting while pursuing their MBA at Harvard Business School. Laguarta had experience consulting on sustainability before starting a startup, and Dalal worked in the food and agriculture supply chain. A third co-founder, CTO Nathan Torbick, also joined.
“If you look at agriculture, there’s been a lot of work done, regenerative agriculture is something people around the world are talking about, but if you look at the number of people working specifically on rice, it’s much lower than most other crops,” Laguarta said in an interview.
Measure emissions, sell carbon credits
Rice accounts for about half of greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural lands, including 30 percent of agricultural methane emissions. However, farms can significantly reduce methane emissions from rice cultivation by improving water management or alternating wet and dry periods.
In partnership with non-profits Syngenta Foundation and Dr. Reddy's Foundation, and Spanish food processing company Ebro Foods, Mitti Labs has launched five projects across India to help farmers adopt and implement sustainable farming techniques, avoid stubble burning, and use limited water. The paddy projects span 30,000 hectares and will help reduce CO2e emissions by 120,000 tonnes, the startup said.
Mithi Labs works with over 40,000 smallholder farmers to implement and measure sustainable farming practices, helping to improve the environmental aspects of rice farming while also increasing farmers’ annual incomes by up to 30%. The startup also allows farmers to generate revenue through carbon credits that the startup sells on their behalf in the marketplace.
Convincing smallholder farmers to adopt new technologies can sometimes be difficult, as they are often hesitant to move away from their existing practices. But Dalal told TechCrunch that Mitti Labs provides support and advice to farmers, and provides regular contact through its implementation partners on the ground.
“Our team works with implementation partners to continually improve the pitch to farmers. What works in one village may not work in another, so the behavior change component has to be very targeted and perfectly aligned with the needs of the community,” he said.
On the technology side, Mitti Labs uses a remote sensing platform that uses satellite imagery to help measure climate impacts. The startup purchases high-resolution imagery captured using synthetic aperture radars from SAOCOM and Umbra, and fuses it with publicly available satellite imagery to understand farmer practices. The high-resolution imagery is provided via SAR, which uses a variety of wavelengths to penetrate objects on the Earth’s surface to measure characteristics such as water levels, soil moisture, and plant growth.
Mitti Labs uses ground-based greenhouse gas chambers, along with satellite imagery, to capture methane and nitrous oxide fluxes from the field. Data from these chambers is fed into software models and processed by third-party labs to calculate emissions.
On the carbon credit side, Mitti Labs has been working with Cornell University, the International Rice Research Institute and the U.S. Department of Agriculture for about 12 months to conduct experiments with satellite imagery and gas chamber data to test and improve measurement practices, which in turn will help buyers in Europe and the United States purchase carbon credits with confidence.
Mitti Labs currently partners with Gold Standard to issue carbon credits, but Laguarta told TechCrunch that the startup could expand to Verra as it scales its business.
Converting carbon credits into real money takes time. Laguarta said Mitti Labs is currently in the due diligence phase of the project it has launched. Still, the goal is for farmers to earn at least 70 percent of their farm income through sustainable farming practices. The rest will be split between Mitti Labs’ partners and the startup itself.
The success of the first five projects will help Mitti Labs expand its footprint. The startup already has 10 more projects in the works and plans to expand geographically into Bangladesh, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Laguarta told TechCrunch that Mitti Labs has already found “the right local partners” in the new market and is discussing financing for the local project with project investors and carbon offset buyers. The plan is to launch sometime in late 2024 or 2025. Nevertheless, the startup continues to see India as a focus market.
“India is our first market and we believe it is a market where we have a strong passion and can make an impact,” Laguarta said.
Mitti Labs is not the only startup working on sustainable agriculture in India. Varaha, backed by RTP Global, is one of the established players in the space. However, Laguarta said most of these startups are not focused on specific crops.
“If you’re trying to do five different things, I think that’s a good strategy for some people. What’s important to us is that we want to be the best at rice farming, and we believe we need to have the best people in agroforestry, the best people in biochar and other areas,” he said.
Meat Labs' first round of funding was co-led by Lightspeed and Voyager, with initial support coming from Harvard Innovation Labs.
