The Water and Climate Problem Hiding in Rice Farming

In this episode of the Climate Confident podcast, I’m joined by Dev Dalal and Xavi Laguarta, co-founders of Mitti Labs, for an insightful chat about the critical role of sustainable agriculture in combating climate change.

Dev and Xavi explain how traditional rice farming, particularly in India and Southeast Asia, is a significant source of methane emissions – a potent greenhouse gas. We dive into how Mitti Labs is addressing this through innovative solutions like alternate wetting and drying, direct seeding of rice, and carbon credit incentivisation. These practices not only reduce emissions but also conserve water and improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers.

One of the most compelling points we discuss is the importance of scaling these solutions. Dev and Xavi are clear that without large-scale adoption, the environmental impact will be limited. Their work, currently impacting over 30,000 farmers, is proof that this can be done effectively, and they share their vision of expanding into other Southeast Asian countries.

For anyone interested in the intersection of agriculture, sustainability, and innovation, this episode offers practical insights into how we can make global food systems both more productive and more climate-friendly. Be sure to listen in to learn more about the exciting potential of climate-smart farming!

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Transcript

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Dev Dalal: 0:03

It starts with obviously the water consumption on rice, right? So you have a massive water footprint for every kg of rice or every kilogram of rice, you need 3000 liters of water. It could translate to 20 million liters per hectare.

Tom Raftery: 0:15

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is the Climate Confident podcast, the number one podcast showcasing best practices in climate emission reductions and removals. And I'm your host, Tom Raftery. Don't forget to click follow on this podcast in your podcast app of choice to be sure you don't miss any episodes. Hi everyone. Welcome to the Climate Confident Podcast. My name is Tom Raftery and with me on the show today, I have my two special guests, Devdut and Xavi. Devdut and Xavi, welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself with maybe Devdut going first, going in alphabetical order?

Dev Dalal: 0:53

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having us, Tom. Hi everybody. I'm Devdut or Dev if you find that easier. Born and raised in Mumbai, spent most of my childhood there. I've been in the food and agri space, particularly with a lens on sustainability for the last, I mean, ever since I started my career really. Did my undergrad at the University of Cambridge where I studied land economy and that's what got me into this space. I met Xavi more recently when I was doing my MBA at Harvard. And that's when we learned a lot more about the genesis of agriculture, sustainability and climate and how it can be applied as a very useful tool to administer you know, strategies towards solving for climate change. And yeah that's me in a quick nutshell, pass it over to Xavi.

Xavi Laguarta: 1:33

Hi everyone. It's very good to be here, Tom. Thanks for having us. So I'm Xavi. I'm originally from Barcelona in Spain. My background, I studied electrical engineering at Imperial in London. I then spent some time in, in consulting, and got into sustainability consulting and, and that's where I started working with European governments and a lot of large US corporates on, on their whole plan to net zero and got into this whole space. And then obviously was lucky enough to meet Dev and then Nate eventually our other co founder, while studying at Harvard Business School. So

Tom Raftery: 2:09

Okay. And you guys set up this Mittilabs company. So give me a little bit about the background to why you set it up and what it is you're doing.

Xavi Laguarta: 2:22

Excellent. Yeah, look, we were, I think Dev and I have come from, from slightly different perspectives in this, in this whole space. Dev obviously has a very good understanding of the agriculture space around small holder farmers in India, in Southeast Asia, really. I, however, came from an understanding of, you know, in Europe and in the US, there's, there's a lot of companies trying to really make a change in their own supply chains along with, you know, general global greenhouse gas emissions. And what we understood there is that. When you look at opportunities or solutions, really, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. There's been a lot of different focuses that people have found, whether it's, you know, planting trees or protecting rainforests, or looking at agriculture. And what some people don't really know is that agriculture is one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gas emissions. Now, when you, when you dive into that rabbit hole, which is really what we did, you realize that there's a lot being done in the West and more developed agriculture markets across a space that people call regenerative agriculture, which essentially means how do farmers transition their practices to either store carbon in the soil or at least reduce the emissions into the environment. And when you look at India and Southeast Asia, which are really huge agriculture markets, there really haven't been that many solutions built for those specific environments. And, and that's really where Mittilabs came in. We, We found that rice is actually, you know, one of the highest emitting crops. It's consumed by around half the world's population daily. And, and yet it's, it's the salute, it's this crop that people have not put that much focus on. And, you know, whether it's because it's further away from a lot of the countries that have started putting very ambitious targets, or far away from some of the corporate teams that are looking at this space. We really wanted to, to laser down into what we could do to help rice farmers, not just produce more rice for their growing population, but also produce it more sustainably. And that was really the genesis of what we're doing here.

Dev Dalal: 4:39

Yeah. And if I might add Tom, before you, you, you shoot. So obviously the, you know, the countries that grow rice typically are in South Asia and Southeast Asia, where you have massive water scarcity issues, you have massive low income basis, low productivities at farm level. So I think that's just another sort of mission that, you know, an angle that we would bring in terms of the mission that we're trying to solve for.

Tom Raftery: 5:01

Yeah. Interesting. It is produced in other places as well. And if I'm saying that I know because I'm based here in Seville and A lot of the fields around me here in Seville are used for rice production, particularly as you head towards Doñana and that kind of area, kind of southwest of Seville. So, but I, I take your point more typically when people think of rice production, they tend to think of Southeast Asia, I think.

Xavi Laguarta: 5:29

Yeah. When you're looking at it's, it's a good point. We, we obviously, even if it's maybe outside of our strategy plan, having, having some rice farmers in Spain would obviously be a beautiful full circle at some point. But when you look at, at the number of hectares, there's around 150 million hectares of rice cultivation globally. India's got, I might get this wrong, but around 45 million or so. And so that gives you a bit of an idea. And And look, I think for us, the, the beauty of these solutions, or at least what we're trying to do is it only works if you do it at scale. You know, these, these problems are so massive and there's so much good that can be done from this both for the environment, but also from a livelihood perspective, if you do it right. And for us, scale has become so important that we've only really looked at solutions that can really be scalable and that impact can really be in the, in the millions of tons. And so, that was one big reason for, for India. At the same time. I mean, you need to think about where's, that growth coming from and all these solutions where you're trying to either change the environment or even agriculture production. One very interesting thing for us about India and Southeast Asia is that the production baseline right now is really quite low. And the emission baseline is very high. You'll go to rice farmer in Sevilla and they will have been working to increase productivity and refining that model over many, many, many years. And then you pan over to a farmer in many regions in India. And of course there's some more developed farmers, but the grand majority are smaller farmers that have not introduced mechanization that are still using the same practice that they were using many years ago. And so the opportunity for change there at scale is huge. And that's really what attracted us.

Tom Raftery: 7:25

Sure. No, that makes sense. That makes sense. Tell me though, because I know we covered this on the intro call. So I'm aware, but I wasn't aware before we had the intro call. And I'm guessing most of the people listening won't be aware either. Can you explain why rice farming has such a significant environmental impact, particularly in terms of greenhouse gas emissions?

Dev Dalal: 7:46

Yeah, for sure. I mean, it starts with obviously the water consumption on rice, right? So you have a massive water footprint for every kg of rice or every kilogram of rice, you need 3000 liters of water. It could translate to 20 million hectares 20 million liters per hectare. The rationale for farmers flooding their fields is twofold. One of them is primarily to sort of promote weed control. So the water allows, you know, for the shoots of the rice to, you know, go above the water and sort of thrive, but it kills the weeds that are on the surface. And then secondary, obviously it's just the irrigation of the, of the crops so that you have better yields. In the process of irrigating their fields to kill the weeds you have stagnant water that's stuck on fields for, you know, prolonged periods of time and that causes anaerobic digestion. And anaerobic digestion is essentially methane released because you have, the reaction of the soil's bacteria and the bases of the shoots reacting underwater. And instead of having normal photosynthesis, you have anaerobic digestion, which causes bubbling and therefore methane release. So that's the source of the methane emissions from rice. So yeah, you, and you know, obviously the rationale for flooding the fields to kill weeds can be supported by other options. And as long as you can arrest these conditions of anaerobic digestion, you can curb the situations where you have, you know, massive decomposition and methane release, so that's essentially the practice change that we're trying to target to save the water and to sort of reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the flip side of the same problem.

Xavi Laguarta: 9:08

Yeah. And, and, and I'll add, I'll add another solution. And, and actually, I mean, you know, we, we talk about water a lot and, and it is a massive component because actually that, that reaction or that practice that Dav was talking about, that continuous flooding, it's a massive methane emitter. methane, Maybe it is. I always pronounce it wrong. And I say that word many times a day. Um, the, the methane is such a potent gas compared to CO2. You know, we talk about carbon and CO2 all the time in the space. And it's kind of been coined the greenhouse gas that everyone talks about. But, you know, methane and nitrous oxide are very potent as well. And and methane, you know, at a at a hundred year timeline you know, it's got about a 28 times multiplier on CO2, whereas a 20 year timeline, which is really the timeline that we're all really striving for in terms of this climate solutions it's about, you know, over 80 times more potent than CO2. And so that makes that impact from rice just that much stronger. I'd also say, you know. When we look at climate solutions, Dev and I are really quite practical and we were very focused on what are the low hanging fruit that we can go for? You know, there's some solutions that, you know, sucking carbon out of the air is an incredible solution. Scaling that up will be a challenge. And I think we need to be fighting in all different fronts and, and there should definitely be people, you know, looking for those types of solutions. But for us, you know, if a farmer can. Make some changes, we can incentivize farmers to make changes on pretty easy to switch practices. Then that sounds like something that we should really be focusing on. The water piece is very important that that mentioned, I think another interesting one to talk about, which a lot of people might not be familiar with, but in India is very present, mainly in the north of India and Delhi and so on is rice stubble burning and, and, know, the practice that's done here, that maybe Dev can elaborate a little bit more on is it's around farmers burning the rice stubble, the leftover from the rice grain at the end of the season, and you know, it's become common practice for a lot of farmers to burn that at the end of the season, which causes a lot of pollution and a lot of issues. The wind picks up that, you know, smog and it takes it to the, to the cities. And so that's something that or also very focused on.

Tom Raftery: 11:38

Okay, so, I mean, we're all familiar with the air quality issues in places like Delhi around Diwali due to the stubble burning that hits the headlines every year at the same time, but tell me, what can farmers do that doesn't require them to flood their fields and doesn't require them to burn the stubble at the end of the season? What are the alternatives they have and will that impact their yields?

Dev Dalal: 12:05

Yeah, for sure. I think we lay out all three of these and sort of promote behavior change step by step. So the first practice that we talk about is called alternate wetting and drying. Which is teaching the farmer with, you know, installing a PVC pipe in their fields with perforations and teaching them, okay, at this level you flood your fields, at this level you don't. In that process you arrest these conditions of anaerobic digestion and you've also got, you know, you've curbed methane release and you've also curbed the water consumption. EWDA is a practice, so alternate wetting and drying does not have any negative impact on yield. It does not bolster yields either, but it does not significantly impact yields in a negative manner. So that's step one. It's a simple behavior change. You don't need mechanization. You don't need tooling. You just need enablement, training, and sort of, you know, incentives for behavior change. And that's why it's a sweet spot for carbon markets. The second practice that we work on is called direct seeding of rice. Direct seeding of rice in itself is a water conservation technique, plus you know, it reduces methane emissions because you're, instead of puddling the rice fields for, you know, 30 days before transplanting you do direct seeding and therefore you curb that 30 day period of nursery preparation and transplanting. And in the process of curbing that 30 day period is how you can sort of manage your crop stubble better. So let me explain why the stubble is burned. So in India, especially in the Northern part, you have what they call minimum support prices or MSP windows. And this is when the farmer has to prove that they've done their sowing and they've done their harvest within these windows so that they can supply their product to the government. The MSP windows for rice and for the following season, which is wheat, are so narrow in between that farmers only have a matter of, you know, 5, 7, 10 days to sort of switch their fields from rice harvest to wheat planting. And given the short period of time, the easiest way to do this is obviously just burn whatever leftover stock they have, because otherwise they'd either need mechanization or labor or some other sort of technique that allows for the collection of this biomass or for the decomposition of this biomass. So it's very much a manufactured regulatory government driven issue. And then obviously with climate change and season shifting, like that time period that you, you know, back in the day might have been 25, 30 days is now become 5, 10, 15 you know, much shorter time periods in between the rice harvest and the wheat sowing. So yes, by doing DSR as our second practice, we're able to sort of shorten the crop cycle by, you know, an additional 20 to 30 days. And that gives farmers enough time to either let their, You know, rice stubble decompose on the soil or allows for some sort of collection of that biomass to be then used in other alternative applications. But yeah, that's basically the three core practices that we, we look to change on the ground.

Tom Raftery: 14:34

Okay. And you mentioned that a lot of the farmers in this area are, you know, doing traditional methods, which presumably has been handed down father to son, father to daughter, maybe over generations and generations. How easy is it going to be to get these farmers to change their ways from stuff their ancestors have been doing, as I said, for generations and generations?

Dev Dalal: 15:02

Yeah. I mean, the first thing is that farmers today realize that they're in a bit of a pickle. Their soil health has degraded completely. They do not have water. So as much as you know, you want to continue a certain practice change, you realize that now you need to dig your wells even deeper. You need to dig more wells or you need to find different sources of irrigation. And so that's become a reality. That the ground water tables have just subsided. And, and, you know, as much as we say, this is a climate mitigation strategies is almost a climate adaptation strategy for a farmer so that they learn how to farm with less water because water is the main sort of concern over here. The second one with DSR is that farm labor is very expensive and not very easy to find. And DSR offers a technique to sort of, you know, change the reliance on this, you know, the farm labor that has been doing transplanting and puddling and sort of nursery planting, and, and sort of opt for mechanization instead. So that's two real problems that they face. And then for any other behavior change, I already touched upon this, but it needs to be a mix of, you know, incentivization and then also enabling, the practice change so enabling the practice change will happen through some form or some entity that has built trust with farmers. So we often work with implementation partners who have been in these regions for a long time. So there's already that sort of, you know, element of trust with the face that goes to tell the farmer, Hey, I have this new technique for you. I have this new idea for you. You should think about trying it. And then obviously we, we support them with advisory and multiple touch points so that we make sure that, you know, the, the practice change does happen. And then of course the incentive is a critical part, right? So the, the farmer is obviously doing this for some sort of monetary compensation or some sort of incentive. And yeah, that's effectively the, so you have either a real pain point that the farmer's feeling, then you enable and then you incentivize. I think that's how you can enact behavior change at large.

Tom Raftery: 16:45

Okay. And where are, where's the funding for the incentivization coming from?

Xavi Laguarta: 17:18

Yeah, yeah, that's really where the the carbon markets can play a role when, you know, as a company, we, we view different sources of capital. As any source of capital that can be used for this, this challenge. If that's coming from government subsidies, if that's coming from carbon markets, whether it's volunteer compliance, those are all that's at the end of the day, capital that wants to enact the change and, you know, where, where we find ourselves as, as Mittilabs is really trying to be that bridge between that farmer and that source of capital. We want to be able to direct that capital to the farmers in the right way, while also providing the right trust and transparency to those offering that capital that those changes have actually happened on the ground. And so if I dig a little bit deeper into that taking the example of the carbon markets. You know, the carbon markets at the end of the day, these are you know, the voluntary carbon market. These are organizations that have set net zero targets for themselves and specific targets before reaching full net zero. You know, they, they have decided to use offsets as one of a few different avenues for them to reach those targets. So when you look at this problem that we're talking about, a problem that could be a potential solution, you see something where these corporates can be buying up the credits or rather, the change that the farmer is doing and account for that themselves. Now, this, this transaction really is, is what we call this, you know, this purchase of the carbon credit that that farmer has generated. And so our job as Mittilabs, we really view it as how do we define programs with farmers that allow them to really create this change on the ground and not just create it for the short term, create a change that will last, you know, for good. And at the same time, how do we prove that that change was done in the right way so that they can generate that credit that a company that cares about the reputation that cares about the quality of where they're putting their money will actually want to accept and incentivize this change. And so how we do that really is, you know, Dev and I talk about the supply side and the demand side. The supply side is the farmers, the grassroot organizations that we work with on the ground supporting in that change. Right now, we're working with over 30,000 farmers on the ground across different regions of India. In each of these regions, we've got around, you know, 120 field agents on the ground, onboarding farmers, training them, requesting the specific documentation that's needed to be part of these programs. And we do this in partnerships with grassroot organizations on the ground. As Dev mentioned, you know, Mittilabs showing up. We are nobody to these farmers, but if we show up with the right organizations that have been working with those villages over time that have gained the trust of those farmers, then that's a different story. Then we can really start tapping into a real behavior change. So once that farmer has gone through that transition and really made those practice changes. What we do you know, is, is really run this scientific experiment proving that that took place across that large scale and then working with the right certification agencies to generate those credits and then sell those credits to the demand side. And you know, we, we, we could dive into a little bit into how we actually do that whole proof point, which is really a lot of the work that that Mittilabs goes through.

Tom Raftery: 21:11

Yeah, let's, let's do that because the voluntary carbon markets are, well, they're suffering a lot reputationally from the fact that there have been a lot of scams is probably too strong a word, or maybe not. But how are you doing the, as it's known, MRV, the measuring, reporting and verification of the fact that these emissions are being reduced by the farmers?

Xavi Laguarta: 21:40

Yeah, look, I think the key point to to focus on here is, you know, why, why are we doing this? And, and, and, and how do we think about this MRV, this, this, this monitoring, measurement, reporting, and verification in a way that makes economic sense for the farmer, for the project and for the, for the buyer of the credits? To us you know, we, as a team, when we started Dev, Nate, and I. Nate had spent his last 25 years really building out these MRV solutions in the West and we built out a team. We're now about 25 people in the corporate team. About half of those are data scientists and engineers and greenhouse gas models and agronomists. So, for us, it really started as let's set up a team that's really built to build the right trustworthy solution. When we talk about how do you actually implement this in the ground, we start by thinking about two, two buckets, I'd say. First, you need to make sure that you can prove to the buyer of these credits that these practices actually took place, and then you need to help translate those practice changes into what that meant in terms of number of credits generated. All right. The first bucket is, is, is where we use remote sensing. So here we use synthetic aperture radar, satellite imagery at high resolution to track exactly what's happened on the ground for every single field. Meaning for a farmer that's working on a half an acre plot of land, we want to detect what did they do with their water management? What did they do with our seeding practices? So we measure things like soil moisture. We measure things like water level, seeding practices. And from there, we're able to understand remotely without even stepping on the ground for every single farmer in our program. What is that farmer doing? Now, this obviously helps give that carbon credit buyer a lot of trust that their program from day one, but also in, you know, year 10 is actually being compliant. And these farmers are actually doing what we claim they're doing. It also helps us organize our teams very well, because as you can imagine managing this on the ground, It's quite a nightmare, right? When you get to the thousands and even hundreds of thousands of farmers. And so it helps us understand which farmers need extra training, extra support. And that really is part of the equation here. Now it's not enough to know what the farmer did. We now need to translate that into, well, what does that mean in terms of greenhouse gas reduction or rather, methane reduction, because that's what will dictate how many credits we can issue. And so once we understand what practice change has been done, then we run experiments on the ground. We use what they call a gas chambers on the ground that actually measure the real methane, and nitrous oxide and carbon fluxes that are going on in that field. We run test control sites, and then we've developed together with partners, such as Cornell University, and we work with the USDA in Arkansas and a bunch of other scientific partners. We've developed our own greenhouse gas models that allows to extrapolate those findings across regions to understand if one specific farmer in, you know, the state of Odisha made a change, what does that mean in terms of methane reduction. And so in a way, you know, there's, there's no real answer as to how do you give the maximum level of proof for a program like this, but for us, it's, it's about being very intentional to doing the right science and then having a lot of dialogue with the buyer community as to what they consider the most high quality project and making sure that we're striving to, to be there. So, so that's really how we think about that, that MRV side. Yeah, Dev, I don't know if you want to share anything else there.

Dev Dalal: 25:50

Yeah. I mean, just, just before you go, Tom, I mean, when you look at alternatives to remote sensing for, you know, smallholder farming context, such as prevalent in South Asia, Southeast Asia, you only have two options. One is in situ measurements or IoT devices or hardware. And you know that the farmers are very distributed. And you're not talking about one device on a hundred acre field. You're talking about a hundred devices on a hundred acre fields, right? So that's not a scalable solution. Second is you rely on field extension that can go and sort of take, you know, visual recordings or put stuff into the app, et cetera. But then again, when you talk about scaling from a 5,000, 10,000, 100,000 hectare level that becomes a bit unreliable in terms of, you know, really monitoring whether human field extension has actually gone and done a good job at monitoring or not. So, so, so really like to bring up the level of trust, transparency, credibility of projects in these regions where there's, you know, smallholder farmers and, and landholding basis remote sensing becomes potentially the only solution where you can actually do MRV for agricultural land management projects.

Tom Raftery: 26:53

Fair enough, fair enough. Looking ahead, what do you see as the next big innovations in climate smart agriculture that you're excited about?

Xavi Laguarta: 27:04

Yeah, that's a, that's a great question. I'll, I'll have a go, Dev. You probably have some, some other exciting ones. Look for us, you know, we've been talking about, how do we get farmers to reduce emissions, right? This, this is the whole conversation has been around. How do we get methane to be reduced in the farm field without the farmer losing yield? What excites us the most moving forward is. Okay. It's great for a farmer to be able to emit less emissions. That helps the planet, that helps the environment and it'll help the farmer down the road. But when we're working with smallholder farmers where there's a real livelihood challenge there, and the farmer is, you know, needing to have successful season after season to be able to support its, its, its family. We are really excited about how do we not only help farmers become more environmentally friendly, but also become more productive. And so, you know, we are in a space now where we've built these programs with large number of farmers. Built a great advisory support teams and built a strong community around Mittilabs that we can now really play a middle ground between new innovations that are coming about, whether that's, you know, biostimulants, whether that's new seeds, improve fertilizers and those farmer groups, we have a lot of data, and information on that farm level. We can run a lot of simulations on how different inputs, different solutions could play out in that farm, and we can run a lot of tests. And so we're in a great position to be able to test out a lot of different things and understand what is that, you know, not necessarily blueprint for the whole of India, but what is right set of practices and right set of inputs for each farmer that can really help them become more productive while becoming more sustainable. And that's something that, you know, as a team, we're, we're very excited about and we're putting a lot of focus on moving forward. So it's really about leveraging not just what we can develop, but rather what's the community developing and how do we plug that in? To the implementation.

Tom Raftery: 29:16

Okay. Dev, did you want to say something?

Dev Dalal: 29:18

Yeah, I mean, just Xavi summarised that well, but maybe a few specifics. So, you know, bio stimulants that have sort of, I think the use of biologicals in general in these contexts is very low. So that's a very, you know, interesting sort of topic to be pushing. Cause you mainly using chemical fertilizers at this point and there's a lot of biological alternatives, you know, that, that have more efficacy and obviously less of an environmental footprint. So that's one, bucket of inputs that would promote climate smart agriculture while improving soil health and improving yields and reducing sort of, you know, reliance on chemicals. The second is also the level of mechanization. So, you know, currently you have, you know, forms of drudgery and so on so forth. So can we actually have, you know, better seeding equipment, better drones, you know, spraying through drones that is a little bit more targeted and judicious in its use of crop protection, et cetera. So some of these topics, definitely lead in to, you know, reduce nitrogen emissions, reduce methane emissions, et cetera. So that's the sort of bundle or the bucket of interventions that we are looking at. Yeah yeah, that's what I wanted to add.

Tom Raftery: 30:18

Okay. And you're currently working in India. Are you planning to expand out from India to other countries in Southeast Asia? I would assume, given that you mentioned that you want to concentrate on where the largest concentration of rice production is.

Xavi Laguarta: 30:36

Yeah, look, right now, we've there's a lot of growth potential in India, right? India is, it's massive. If we ever get close to covering a big portion of India, I feel like we'd be, we'd feel very lucky and very accomplished, but I think given the, the different regulatory systems around carbon markets, mainly for different countries in Southeast Asia we, we've seen an opportunity to potentially expand some of our projects into countries like Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, even Bangladesh. And so, we right now have sourced project partners and in each of these countries and we're going through a bit of a selection as to where exactly we will consider our, you know, probably two key focus countries outside of India within Southeast Asia. And so I think that's something that, you know, in 2025, we'll be very excited about growing into, and know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of learnings that we can have from these different regions as well. And both from you know, data science, remote sensing perspective or agronomy perspective, but also from a business model perspective there, there's a lot we can have there. So that's going to be an exciting phase of growth for sure.

Tom Raftery: 31:55

Okay, great. And beyond environmental benefits, does Mittilabs work contribute to the economic and social well being of the local farmer communities?

Dev Dalal: 32:07

Yeah, absolutely. I think so. It is an all encompassing approach. We're using the carbon markets as the first layer to sort of, you know start with some sort of incentive mechanism going into place. Intention, of course, as you know, as we've been saying, there is a very low baseline in terms of productivity. There is a higher reliance on inputs that, you know, is only getting worse. So, you know, in last year I use 50 bags. This year I have to use a hundred bags of urea or nitrogen based fertilizer, et cetera. And that's been the story for the last seven years. So the cost base is increasing productivity is not, water tables are drying out. So it's almost inevitable that we have to look at the package of, you know, a lot of the problems that each community is facing and, and again, every community will face a different set of issues. So it's almost like we cannot naturally have a one, you know, one size fits all or a silver bullet approach to all of the farmers and all of the communities. So being very intentional in particular, listening to the communities, hearing what their problems are, and then sort of. building solutions that can be commonplace as best possible. But then of course, so then customizing for specific needs and objectives. So, yeah, I mean, working on aggregating farmers, working on building some sort of leverage into their purchase mechanisms in terms of how they can buy inputs for, for better and how they can provide market linkages, et cetera, becomes, you know, the inevitable role that we would do in terms of supporting the farmers, but yeah,

Xavi Laguarta: 33:22

yeah. And to your point, Tom, around, you know, farmer, you know, the, the environmental benefits are, are great for farmers, right? They, they, it's not their priority though, at the moment. It'll be, it'll be great for them down the line. And it's, it's great for everyone, but it's not, you know, the farmer's duty to be right now solving climate change for, for everyone else in the world. And so there, that incentive that we talk about is, is really crucial. Because there needs to be something that that farmer is gaining. Now, the carbon markets are, you know, universally priced. And the reality is that you know, what a $15 credit can do for a farmer in Iowa is very different to what a $15 credit can do for a farmer in you know, Telangana in India. And so that's where really, there's a very strong livelihood component to our projects, which is that we have the potential to increase the farmer's bottom lines by, you know, up to 20, even 30%, through these programs. You know, these are farmers that a lot of them are, you know, making around $200 in profit, even less, some more depending on the farmer. And, you know, they can really be making strong economic gains from joining these programs. So that incentive really is a strong pull. We also, you know, we're in the initial phases but we're really focused as Dev was mentioning on okay, well, that that incentive, that payment from carbon markets is great. What else can we do? How can we help them on productivity, meaning on revenue? And then how can we also help them on costs on, on optimizing those costs. And so our goal will really be to how do we touch on the environmental point, but then aside from that incentive, how do we also help farmers improve that revenue, reduce that cost. And, and if we, if we manage to pull that off, I think then you know, we'll be very this could be a very attractive solution for, for farmers to, to join these programs.

Tom Raftery: 35:25

Okay. And what kind of KPIs or measures of success do you have in place for yourselves? And, how can you continue with that journey of continuous improvement?

Xavi Laguarta: 35:37

Yeah, that's that's a good question. Look I don't know if I'd share specific KPIs for the business But for us, you know, we've been talking about, quality and scale, right? To us there's, there's no reason to scale a solution that we don't believe is you know, a truly good solution, both for the environment, but also for the farmer. And so, you know, this last year and a half has been super focused on us on developing that right scientific rigor around the practices that we're implementing, making sure not just that we're tracking them, measuring them well, but also that they're being implemented well. So that quality aspect is key. And the scale is also super important, right? We don't want to have a super high quality solution for just a few farmers. We want to really be able for this to become democratized and for this to really become something that can scale across the millions of hectares of rice. And so, you know, that's, that's really where our goal is. It's really reaching those, those millions and, and really touching on India, but also touching on other regions. And so I think over the next, you know, 3, 4 years, we're, we're really going to push hard to match that quality that we're getting in these initial projects at that, you know, 30,000 hectare scale to really scale out to the hundreds of thousands, even millions of hectares. And that's what's very exciting to us.

Tom Raftery: 37:04

Cool. Were you going to say something Dev?,

Dev Dalal: 37:06

Yeah. I was just gonna add that the, the, the core unit for us is obviously the hectare or that acre of land, and then what's done on that hectare of land in terms of water consumption, in terms of, you know, environmental footprint from jst emissions in terms of revenue base of that hectare of land is essentially the, the, the, you know, the realm of KPIs that we'd like to track, uh, specific to the farm or the, you know, the, the farmer, which is sort of the center of it all. And then of course, yeah, as Xavi mentioned, the business is slightly different metrics that we'd keep in mind for ourselves.

Tom Raftery: 37:32

cool, cool.

Dev Dalal: 37:34

Bit

Tom Raftery: 37:34

of a left field question for you. If you could have any celebrity or fictional character as a spokesman for your project, who would it be and why?

Dev Dalal: 37:49

Huge.

Xavi Laguarta: 37:49

I like that question. Dev, you might need to pick an Indian one, and I might need to go Western. If I'm not going to go too personal there, because obviously I'd, I'd go for, for Messi or one of these, these great footballers, just, just so I had a chance to hang out with them. we've, we've actually seen a lot of actors take a big part of of this climate communication, right? People like Leonardo DiCaprio and others that have played a role there. And to me, what I find very exciting about, these platforms like Netflix and Amazon and so on, that, that documentaries have become such a big piece of of communication. And, I think there's, there's a big opportunity for us. It's something that excites us. We actually have a media team going out to the fields in the coming weeks is, Is, is communication at a broader scale for topics like this one that. For people that are in the know with climate might make sense for others. It feels very far away. It's, it's very different to see a well produced film or documentary that touches on these aspects versus, you know, a corporate deck. And so I think that's something that could be pretty exciting at some stage.

Tom Raftery: 39:00

Okay, and who'd be narrating your documentary?

Xavi Laguarta: 39:05

I'd maybe go for, uh, yeah, let's go for a DiCaprio. Why not?

Dev Dalal: 39:10

Dev? take Morgan Freeman with his voice. Maybe that's the one.

Xavi Laguarta: 39:15

That would be pretty cool.

Dev Dalal: 39:16

No, it's an interesting, I mean, my realm. And I think in India you have two major categories of influencers, right? You have cricket and you have Bollywood. So if I could get, you know, Dhoni, who is, I think, universally a loved cricketer. He was the captain that won the 2011 World Cup and I think everything that he says comes with a bit of gravitas and comes with a bit of seriousness and everybody listens. So I'd say him as the sort of, you know, from the cricket bucket and then of course Bollywood is, is interesting, but the thing is, because we work in projects all over India and you may have realized we have the sub. Bollywood, so you have Tollywood and Collywood and you know, a lot of these something. So maybe having one actor is probably not the best option. So I think cricket probably unifies the country most. So I'd go with yeah, I would go with Virat Kohli or, or Mahendra Singh Dhoni. I think Dhoni even more cause he's, cause he's the real deal.

Tom Raftery: 40:04

great, great.

Dev Dalal: 40:05

If you're listening listening dhoni, give us give us a shout.

Tom Raftery: 40:09

We're coming towards the end of the podcast now, guys, is there any question I didn't ask that you wish I did, or any aspect of this we haven't touched on that you think it's important to make people aware of?

Xavi Laguarta: 40:20

Look, I, I think we covered a great deal. It's, it's, it's obviously, these are topics that are. You know, the, the deeper you go, the, the more you'll cover it. So there's, there's a lot of depth to, to reach, but to me, I think it's great that we were able to cover the, the problem, the, that, that I, you know, having a lot of conversations with companies and individuals outside of India or rather outside of, outside of Asia, there's, you know, just putting rice on the map is what I think we're really excited by that the rice and the, the issue of rice emissions and the potential solution with rice becomes something that people speak about. That's something that we're very excited about. And so, yeah, thank you for the opportunity to having been able to do that today here.

Dev Dalal: 41:09

Yeah,

Tom Raftery: 41:10

Great, Dev.

Dev Dalal: 41:11

yeah. If I would add, maybe, maybe we didn't speak a lot about our journey into entrepreneurship. I think that might be an interesting sort of topic because we'd love more and more, you know, entrepreneurs like ourselves who have, you know, certain insight or certain skill sets or certain access to resources or networks that can, you know, drive their own, like rice, methane is quite niche. And I think that's, you know, it's niche, but large, obviously, but you know, there's there's many such solutions. And I think, I think maybe, yeah sharing a little bit more about how we went about that process and we're obviously open books if, if people want to reach out, but but yeah, I think maybe that would have been a topic that we could have spoken about a little bit more, but yeah, otherwise. Yeah. Thank you so much. I think we've covered a lot.

Tom Raftery: 41:51

Sure. And speaking of reaching out, if people would like to reach out and learn more about yourselves or your entrepreneurial journey or any of the topics we discussed today, where would you have me direct them?

Xavi Laguarta: 42:05

Yeah, I'd say you, people can look us up at Mitti Labs. So that's M I T T I space L A B S on LinkedIn or, you know, our website is, is mittilabs dot earth. And you know, we've got our contact form there as well. But yeah, Dev and I personally, you can definitely reach out to us and we've got a team that's always excited to help. So, yeah, we can, we're, we're excited to speak to more folks in this space.

Tom Raftery: 42:32

Fantastic. Great. Okay. Gents, that's been really interesting. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today.

Dev Dalal: 42:38

Thank you, Tom.

Xavi Laguarta: 42:39

Right. Thank you very much, Tom.

Tom Raftery: 42:41

Okay, we've come to the end of the show. Thanks everyone for listening. If you'd like to know more about the Climate Confident podcast, feel free to drop me an email to tomraftery at outlook. com or message me on LinkedIn or Twitter. If you like the show, please don't forget to click follow on it in your podcast application of choice to get new episodes as soon as they're published. Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really does help new people to find the show. Thanks. Catch you all next time.