Louis Dreyfus Company (LDC), one of the world’s largest agricultural processors, is purchasing five years’ worth of carbon removal credits from a regenerative agriculture project in Uttar Pradesh, India. 

In addition to boosting the region’s soil health, the project will draw down some 6,000 tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year and result in regeneratively grown wheat that the company can sell to customers looking to reduce their Scope 3 emissions. This is among the first major agricultural projects of its kind announced in the Global South.  

“This initiative aligns with our goal to create more resilient and lower-carbon agricultural supply chains, while meeting demand for sustainably sourced wheat and generating high-quality carbon credits and removals,” said Natalia Gorina, Louis Dreyfus’s global carbon commercial director, and Gangadhara Sriramappa, the company’s head of agricultural research in India, in an email. 

Eliminating burning 

Varaha, a company working with smallholder farmers in Asia, is managing project implementation, soil sampling and ongoing monitoring as well as tracing the lower-carbon wheat from farm to warehouse. Louis Dreyfus’s upfront payment covers the transition costs of the regenerative practices, including machine rentals. 

The company has been active in carbon markets since 2021, with a strong focus on nature-based projects. This new project is located on farms within its own supply chain, a practice known as “insetting.” 

Some 430 farms operating rice-wheat crop rotations across 2,000 acres in the northern Indian state have enrolled in the project so far. Typically, farmers in the region burn the leftover stalks after the rice harvest to prepare the land for the wheat crop, releasing the carbon stored in the stalks and degrading local air quality. 

Farmers participating in the project will use specialized seeding machines that shred the stalks and return them to the soil, while simultaneously sowing seeds for the next crop with minimal soil disturbance. 

The dual action of reincorporating biomass and reducing tillage increases soil carbon content, resulting in a net carbon reduction in the atmosphere. The resulting climate benefits will be third-party verified under an existing Verra carbon credit methodology. 

Digital tracking 

Varaha’s end-to-end digital tracking solution documents the regeneratively grown wheat from the field, through harvest and to a designated warehouse, where it’s kept separate from wheat grown using conventional practices. The process involves farm-level photos and geostamps that docume