This article has been published in partnership with Kalaari Capital.
By the time cotton is picked in Dahegaon, near Nagpur, Maharashtra, the fields are left with dry stalks and crop residue. For generations, farmers had to clear it before the next crop, often by burning it.
“Prior to using biochar, we used to burn all the feedstock produced during the harvest season in the open. That polluted the air and damaged the land for the next crop,” says Ajay Ram Krishna Ghodham, whose family has farmed here for generations.
Today, some of that waste takes a different route. Cotton residue is converted into biochar, a charcoal-like material mixed back into the soil.
The change came after Equilibrium, a carbon-removal company, began working with farmers in the region. They are trained to use a simple Kon-Tiki system to convert the residue through controlled burning, after which the biochar is collected and returned to farms.
For Ajay, the decision comes down to protecting the land his family depends on.
“As farmers, we have always been sceptical about what to use on our land because we are very close to our land,” he says. “Farming is our only source of livelihood.”
Experience is beginning to ease that caution. Farmer Surekha Namdev says biochar has improved her crop yields, soil fertility and moisture retention. Alka Chindan Vishram, who has used it for more than a year, now encourages other farmers to try it.
Crop residue that once became smoke is now returning to the soil. It raises a larger question: what does carbon removal take to work on the ground?
What carbon removal looks like on the ground
The global carbon market is projected to reach $50 billion by 2030, while more than 4,000 companies have received approval for science-based climate targets, creating demand for credible ways to reduce or remove carbon.
India is also putting its own carbon market into operation, with emissions targets already in place for 490 industrial units across seven major sectors.
Companies need climate action, investors are looking at carbon removal, and India has vast agricultural and degraded landscapes where restoration could make a difference.
The challenge begins on the ground. A farmer has to participate, the land has to support the intervention, the process has to be measured properly, the carbon removal has to last, and the economics have to work for the person contributing land and labour.
This is the carbon market’s quality gap: demand is growing, while credible, measurable projects remain difficult to build at scale.
Equilibrium is attempting to build that missing infrastructure. It currently has more than 27,000 smallholder farmers and 30,000 hectares under restoration across agroforestry, mangrove restoration, climate-smart agriculture and biochar. Its larger pipeline covers eight projects across nine states, potentially involving 120,000 hectares and 150,000 farmers.
To understand why, it helps to go back to founder Siddhanth Jayaram, who once sat on the other side of the table, deciding which companies and ideas were worth investing in.
When he left the investor’s chair
Siddhanth had spent years looking at the future through a venture capitalist’s lens, thinking in five-year arcs and backing ideas he believed could matter years later.
Then COVID-19 changed his sense of time. Watching the world come to a standstill made the next 20 or 30 years feel much closer, he says, and left him thinking about what a crisis on the scale of climate change could mean.
“I realised I was underwriting theses instead of owning one,” Siddhanth says.
The question stayed with him: if climate change would define the coming decades, should he continue evaluating people building for that future, or build something himself?
He chose to build.
The shift exposed the everyday complexity of building a climate company. Climate, he realised, could not be solved from a boardroom alone.
“You have to go sit with the farmer, understand the soil, understand ten different moving pieces, and build trust over years, not quarters,” he says.
His earlier experience with Climes, the climate company he had co-founded, had shown him why. Climes helped brands and businesses fund climate projects, but deeper work in the carbon market revealed a shortage of projects meeting a high bar for transparency, permanence and additionality, meaning the climate benefit would not have happened without the project.
The money and demand were there. The ability to consistently turn both into credible work on the ground was missing.
“Demand for climate action was never the bottleneck; trust was,” Siddhanth says.
That realisation shaped Equilibrium, which moves capital towards climate projects and develops those projects itself.
There is no single fix for every farm
On one farm, the answer may be biochar; elsewhere, agroforestry; along a coastline, mangrove restoration.
For Neelesh Sachdeva, Equilibrium’s head of strategy and origination, carbon projects can look very different from a spreadsheet. His job lies at the intersection of climate, carbon, economics and social realities.
First comes the land: What can it support? Could farmers adopt regenerative practices? Would trees work? Is there agricultural residue that could become biochar?
Then comes the harder question: will it work for the farmer?
Take agroforestry. Planting trees can generate more carbon credits per hectare than some regenerative farming practices, but farmers may have to wait years before those trees generate agricultural income.
“So how will you make sure that he earns for four years?” Neelesh asks.
That answer has to be built in from the start, which is why the same intervention cannot simply move from one state to another.
In Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand, Equilibrium is working with tribal farming families who may legally own several hectares but cultivate only a portion. Restrictions around transferring tribal land leave some holdings underused. The company is exploring agroforestry there to put idle land to work and potentially create another income source.
The same principle applies in large parts of Indian forests where invasive Lantana has spread across large stretches. If left behind after removal, it can return. Equilibrium is exploring converting it into biochar to restore soils or benefit nearby farmers.
For Neelesh, a project worth building finds something underused, wasteful or harmful and makes it useful again. The climate benefit must sit alongside a practical reason for people to participate.
That is how Equilibrium describes “high-integrity” carbon removal: the tree has to survive, not merely be planted; biochar has to reach the soil, not simply be produced; the farmer has to see value in participating, not merely sign up; and the carbon number has to reflect what happened in the field.
Those tonnes begin somewhere tangible: a farmer’s field, a stalk once burnt, soil that needs to recover, and a family deciding whether a new practice is worth trusting.
What does a farmer get from a carbon credit?
A carbon credit can look like a simple transaction between a buyer and a farmer. In practice, a credible project begins long before a credit is sold, says Equilibrium co-founder Sricharann Seshadri.
There is planting, land preparation, irrigation, farmer training or converting agricultural waste into biochar. Then comes measuring changes, tracking biodiversity and community outcomes, and documenting results. At scale, satellite imagery, geospatial monitoring and other systems help track thousands of hectares and check progress.
“All of these are building blocks,” Sricharann explains.
At the centre is the farmer. Before someone joins an Equilibrium project, the team discusses what it involves and takes consent to transfer the carbon rights associated with the land. Farmers are also consulted on what they would like to grow, including fruit or timber trees suited to their land and livelihoods.
The project covers most upfront costs, including saplings, irrigation infrastructure, fertilisers, biofertilisers, land preparation and other inputs. Sricharann says 60 to 70 percent of overall project costs go towards these farmer-facing activities.
For the farmer, the model is effectively zero-cost, apart from work that would ordinarily be part of preparing their own land.
Once carbon credits are generated and sold, farmers receive approximately 25 to 30 percent of the resulting revenue, Sricharann says. Payments are made digitally, with records and evidence maintained through the company’s systems.
The aim is to avoid treating carbon revenue as a handout that disappears when funding does. Instead, the project is designed so farmers can benefit from restoring their land, with carbon revenue supporting that model.
High-quality carbon credits can cost more because doing the work properly and proving it worked costs more. Some buyers pay that premium; others focus heavily on price. When a buyer will not cover the cost of a robust project, Equilibrium says it uses blended finance, bringing in grants, philanthropic funding or other concessional capital to bridge the difference rather than cutting corners.
“If you set up the infrastructure for a carbon project correctly, that is how you can reliably pass on the benefits to the farmers,” he says.
A farming lesson that came from a grandmother
Perhaps Siddhanth’s most unexpected lesson came from a Karnataka farmer who has used biochar for about five years.
When Siddhanth asked what convinced him to try it, the farmer spoke about his grandmother. Growing up, he had watched her mix farm waste back into the soil by hand. To him, biochar was a modern version of what his family had always known.
He joked that perhaps people were rediscovering what their grandmothers had been doing all along. What stayed with Siddhanth was the farmer’s thought that, if Equilibrium succeeded, it would essentially give the soil back what their grandmothers once gave it.
That conversation changed how he viewed the work.
On a spreadsheet, soil organic carbon is a number. On a farm, it can explain falling yields, poor moisture retention and why a family that has depended on the same land for generations is suddenly struggling.
“No model prepares you for the fact that the number you’re trying to fix is basically a farmer’s whole life story,” Siddhanth says.
On paper, carbon is measured in tonnes. On a farm, the change is easier to see: crop waste returning to the soil, trees surviving season after season, and farmers earning from land they can keep productive.
For Ajay and thousands of farmers like him, that is where carbon removal begins to feel real. Healthier soil, stronger farms and an additional source of income can give families more reason to keep investing in the land they depend on.
And perhaps that is the strongest measure of success: land that can sustain both a crop and the family growing it.
