Carbon farming in India: Case studies from Maharashtra and Telangana

The key findings are

Farmers (project participants) have not received monetary benefits.
Farmers have limited awareness about climate resilient agriculture and carbon credits.
Two revenue-sharing models: In the first there is no revenue sharing as carbon project is built on existing watershed project for internal auditing; the second project shares revenue with farmers.
Local implementation partner is important for effective project execution.
Local community experienced social benefits such as improved water availability, increased Rabi season cultivation and women participation in agriculture.
Initial adoption of sustainable practices was incentivized by discounts on services such as drone pesticide application.
Project developers feel that lack of a regulated market, low prices and lower demand for Indian carbon credits makes such projects financially unsustainable.
Continued adoption is context specific. For example, abundant rainfall led to discontinuation of Alternate Wetting and Drying (AWD) in the Telangana project.

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