Every harvest left Hardik Vaghasiya with two things: produce to sell, and heaps of crop residue he had to spend time, labour and money clearing.

The 35-year-old farmer from Bardoli in Gujarat grows banana, sugarcane and maize. These crops feed markets, but they also leave behind large quantities of stalks, leaves and biomass once the produce has been collected and sold.

For years, the end of a successful crop cycle brought him back to the same problem. The harvest was over, the income had been earned, but the waste remained scattered across his fields, carrying no value of its own.

“After every crop cycle, there would be a lot of residue left behind. Sometimes it would remain unused, and sometimes farmers in the area would burn it because there was no clear value attached to it,” the farmer recalls.

A problem left behind after every harvest 

Hardik’s problem is familiar to farmers across India.

After a harvest, the crop may leave the field, but the waste often stays behind. Some of it becomes fodder or compost. Much of it lies scattered across the land, waiting to be cleared before the next crop can be sown.

For a farmer already thinking about the next season, the next rainfall and the next market price, this residue becomes one more expense. Clearing it takes time, labour and money. Burning it, for many, feels like the quickest way to move on.

But what looks like a practical choice on the farm carries a larger cost. When crop residue is burnt in the open, it adds to air pollution and releases the carbon that plants have spent months pulling from the atmosphere.

For years, Hardik saw residue the way many farmers do: as something to get rid of. He had never thought that the same stalks, leaves and biomass lying in his fields could one day hold value.

That idea is now beginning to reach farmers through the growing carbon economy. When agricultural waste is used in carefully monitored climate projects, it can be turned into biochar, a carbon-rich material that helps lock carbon into the soil. If this climate benefit is measured and verified, it can eventually be converted into carbon credits, creating a new source of value from what was once treated as waste.

For Hardik, the idea looked difficult to grasp when he first heard about it.

“I did not understand carbon credits at all in the beginning,” he says with a smile. “As farmers, we think about crops, rainfall, soil and market prices. Carbon credits were not something we discussed.”

The concept was introduced to him through Shree Radharani Agrotech, which explained how agricultural residue could be used in climate projects. If the environmental benefits could be measured and verified, carbon credits could potentially be generated and sold, creating a new source of value from material that was previously treated as waste.

What sounded unfamiliar at first slowly began to make sense.

“If farm waste can help the climate and also help farmers earn something extra, then it is worth understanding,” he says.

Building a market for climate action 

The idea behind this change started to come together hundreds of kilometres away in Bengaluru.

‘RenewCred’, the platform helping connect climate action with carbon markets, was founded by entrepreneur Abhimanyu Rathi and his decade-old friend Yogendra Panchal. The company was incorporated in May 2024 in Karnataka after Abhimanyu moved to........

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