There is now a legal way to earn carbon credits from Indian farmland, and there is also a lot of nonsense being forwarded about it. Both things are true at once, which is why this is worth ten minutes.
The mechanism, briefly
The Energy Conservation Act was amended in 2022 to allow an Indian Carbon Market. The Carbon Credit Trading Scheme followed, and a December 2023 amendment added the Offset Mechanism — the voluntary side, open to everyone who is not one of the large industrial entities carrying binding targets. The Bureau of Energy Efficiency administers it. In March 2025 BEE published Version 1 of the Detailed Procedure for the Offset Mechanism, and agriculture and forestry are both Phase 1 sectors in it.
The unit is a Carbon Credit Certificate: one tonne of CO2 equivalent reduced, removed or avoided, verified by an accredited third party, held in a registry run by Grid Controller of India and traded on the power exchanges.
What actually earns a credit on farmland
Agroforestry and tree planting. Improved forest management. Biochar applied to soil. Methane reduction in rice systems. Biogas from crop residue and cattle dung. The common thread is change — a credit pays for doing something measurably different from what would have happened anyway.
That word "anyway" is where most farm projects die. It is called additionality, and it means trees you were going to plant regardless earn nothing. A carbon project has to argue, on paper, to an accredited reviewer, that the activity depended on the carbon revenue.
Four things the pitch leaves out
Offset credits cannot be used for compliance. The two pillars of India's carbon market do not touch. The obligated cement and steel plants cannot meet their targets with your farm's credits under the rules as they stand. Anyone describing a captive market of desperate industrial buyers is describing something that does not currently exist.
Nobody can quote you a price. A certificate is worth what someone pays for it on the day. A per-acre annual income figure is a sales tool, not a forecast, and we will not print one.
Permanence is a commitment on the land. Carbon in trees and soil has to stay there for the crediting period. That constrains what you can do with the plot for years, and reversal can mean handing credits back.
The costs come first. A design document, a validation, and each round of verification are paid before a single credit exists. This is why small holdings are aggregated, and why the aggregator agreement — who owns the credit, who carries the permanence risk, what share reaches the landowner — is the document worth paying a lawyer to read.
If you still want to look at it
The path runs: confirm the activity fits an approved methodology and started on or after 1 January 2025 → register on the ICM portal as a non-obligated entity → write the Project Design Document → validation by an Accredited Carbon Verification Agency → BEE registration → implement and monitor → verification by a different agency → BEE review and issuance.
We have set out each of those steps, with what BEE requires at each one, on our carbon credits page.
What we would say to a landowner in the belt
For most small plots in Phulera, Sambhar, Naraina or Rupangarh, carbon is not the answer. The fixed costs do not divide across a few bighas, and the permanence commitment is heavy relative to what comes back. Where it is worth exploring is larger holdings, an FPO acting together, or land where an agroforestry change was going to happen anyway for other reasons and the credit is a bonus rather than the reason.
That is a duller answer than the forwards give you. It is also the one we would want if it were our land.
Sources. Carbon Credit Trading Scheme, notified 2023 and amended December 2023 · BEE Detailed Procedure for the Offset Mechanism, Version 1, March 2025 · CERC (Terms and Conditions for Purchase and Sale of Carbon Credit Certificates) Regulations, 2026. This is information, not advice, and the rules are still moving — check the current BEE and ICM portal guidance before you act.