Sustainable staple

Half of the world’s population rely on rice as a daily staple, making paddy rice production a vital component of global food security. However, rice cultivation is also a significant contributor to climate change, emitting about 40 million tonnes of methane – 8% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emission, each year - with a climate footprint is comparable to international aviation. But by adopting mitigating measures, for example by reducing water consumption and fertilizer usage, as well as embracing alternate wetting and drying (AWD) processes, rice farmers could reduce as much as 48% of global methane emissions.

AWD technology can reduce the number of irrigations significantly compared to farmers’ usual practices, thereby lowering irrigation water consumption by 25%, reducing diesel fuel consumption for pumping water by 30 litres per hectare, halving methane emissions, and producing 500kg more rice grain yield per hectare. AWD reduces the frequency of flooding in rice farms, improving soil quality, with better soil structures allowing farmers to intercrop rice with other agricultural crops, which in turn leads to diversified farming systems, providing multiple sources of income.

In 2021, our Indian ag-tech subsidiary, nurture.farm led AWD programmes across over 140,000 acres, training farmers to adopt AWD methods. Over the course of the project, over 80,000 small and marginal farmers were supported with the tools to perform AWD, which led to 15-30% water savings.

Agriculture is one of the only industries that can reverse the effects of climate change and remove carbon from the atmosphere. One of the Earth’s largest carbon stocks, soils have the capacity to hold around three times as much carbon as the atmosphere. At UPL we’re enabling the wider agricultural community to effectively and sustainably achieve this with education, training, and skills-building programs, that empower growers around the world to practice carbon farming, sequestering atmospheric carbon in agricultural soils. And through our Gigaton Carbon Goal commitment to sequester 1 billion metric tonnes of atmospheric carbon dioxide in agricultural soils by 2040, we’re offering the necessary inputs and support backed by a carbon credit scheme to ensure that farmers have a vital, second revenue stream.