Climate change correction is not a small task. Ask carbon removal developers like MittiLabs.
The New York-based startup has developed technology that measures how much methane is released by rice paldies and uses it to train hundreds of thousands of farmers with climate-friendly practices. A type of high-five effort that venture capitalists usually avoid.
So how did Mitti raise funding from investors? In short, partnerships.
Mitti has begun working with Nature Conservancy on a partnership to promote renewed banned agriculture. The startup speaks only to TechCrunch, the latest in a series of deals expanding its scope. Mitti uses AI-powered models to measure, report and verify work done by nonprofit workers on the ground in India. There, they help farmers implement the climate-friendly practice of swath.
“Most of the project operations on the ground come from locals in the village where these projects are being implemented,” co-founder Xavier Ragualta told TechCrunch.
Mitti’s main business is currently focused on developing projects that reduce the amount of methane produced by rice agriculture, but the company is working to provide more software capabilities to third parties.
“We can measure range 3 emissions from other project developers or companies working with rice farmers,” Laguarta noted emissions that the organization does not directly control. “Anyone who is already running projects on the ground, it’s like a SaaS solution that we can provide them.”
Mitti isn’t just chasing Saas-Partnership Angle. Mati Carbon, which recently won the Xprize Carbon Grand Prize, develops measurement, reporting and verification software to spread across farms and help minerals remove carbon and fertilize soil.
The methane reduction project uses the software to generate carbon credits that Mitti tracks. The company will take a percentage of the credit sales and pass the rest to the farmers and the community, he said. “Usually, farmers will see an improvement of about 15% in revenue by participating in the program.” For smallholder farmers who often wobble on the edge of profitability, such income makes sense.
Mitti’s software studies various signals from rice farms and determines how much methane it releases throughout the growing season. Rice cultivation differs from many other types of agriculture, as fields are flooded for most of the year. This creates an anaerobic or oxygen-free state in the soil, which promotes the growth and metabolism of the suite of methane-producing microorganisms.
Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas that has warmed planets 82 times more than comparable carbon dioxide levels for 20 years. Rice agriculture is a major source of human-strapped methane emissions, contributing to approximately 10% to 12% of the total.
Mitti’s main data sources come from satellite images and radar. Radar can penetrate clouds, plants, water and soil to determine what is happening where microorganisms live. This information is then sent to an AI model trained with satellite data and extensive field studies results.
Smallholder farmers play a major role in Indian agriculture. The average farm size is 1 hectare (approximately 2.5 acres). Monitoring each with physical equipment will reduce costs. Remotely detected data helps to keep validation costs reasonably high, and partnerships help bring climate-friendly practices to millions of farmers.
“90% of the rice is grown in Asia, and potentially outside China, the majority of rice-growing areas have these similar small-scale farming dynamics,” said Ragualta. “We have a deep partnership with Nature Conservancy, which will allow us to develop these tools, which will be available for use in many other programs in the region.”
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