Rice is a staple food for nearly half the world’s population. It provides critical calories and nutrition to over 3.5 billion humans, and yet its production causes more than 10% of global human-caused methane emissions. In the agricultural sector, aside from cattle and livestock production, rice production is the single biggest emitter of methane, which is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Reducing the emissions from existing rice fields is one of the most impactful solutions today to address the growing climate crisis.
In the production landscape, rice fields are often flooded with water, which starves microorganisms in the soil of oxygen. As organic matter decomposes, bacteria feast on the organic matter and emit methane into the atmosphere. On a localized scale, the impact is insignificant. But on a global scale, the negative impacts on the climate are catastrophic.
However, several farming practices can be changed to dramatically reduce the methane emissions from rice fields that do not impact yield or quality of the crop. Implementing 4 or 5 practice changes can reduce methane emissions by more than 50%, and in some geographies, farmers can reduce their methane emissions by over 80% with additional improvements. This reality provides a win-win situation for all actors. Farmers can improve their soils, reduce their emissions and sell high integrity carbon credits to the market to improve their income streams. Companies in the supply chain can purchase products from regenerative farms and high integrity carbon credits from farms that reduce their emissions over the long term, with transparent data to back it up. And global emissions of methane could be greatly reduced, lessening the severity of the climate crisis.
Climate Sense aims to be a part of the solution to reduce methane emissions and drive soil improvements and farmer income gains. We put technology into the hands of farmers looking to capitalize on the growing market for rice from regenerative farms that are drastically reducing their GHG emissions. Our proprietary approach that combines measurement and modeling, provides customized improvement pathways for rice farmers to improve their soils, reduce tillage, farm regeneratively and ultimately create and sell carbon credits to the growing global market. We provide verified dMRV back to the individual farmer with blockchain transparency, ensuring carbon credits are credible and backed by real change on the ground. And ultimately, we stand ready to dig in and solve the methane challenge as part of the global set of solutions to the climate crisis.