France-based climate investor Mirova, with backing from Kering and other corporates, has invested $30.5 million in India’s Varaha to accelerate regenerative farming across the country’s northern breadbasket. The transaction, based on a carbon-credit investment model rather than equity, represents Mirova’s first foray into carbon allocation in India and is designed to support the uptake of climate-smart practices by hundreds of thousands of smallholder farmers.
Unlike shareholders, Mirova will not take shares but will instead have a share of the verified credits generated over time to align with measured emissions reductions and soil carbon gains. An affiliate of Natixis Investment Managers, the firm puts companies’ corporate decarbonisation budgets into high-integrity projects and its backers include Kering, Orange, L’Occitane Group, Capgemini, Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield and MANE—consult the list below for more people looking to whittle hard-to-abate supply-chain emissions.
Why This Deal Matters For Carbon Markets
Despite that volatility, the voluntary carbon market has seen demand for credible nature-based credits continue to grow as brands wrestle with their Scope 3 emissions. With capital structured as a forward flow of credits rather than equity, investor outcomes are tied to on-farm performance — and it can crowd more funding into adoption at the field edge, where balance sheet constraints often prevent change.
India’s agriculture is critical to both food security and climate resilience. Practices that return carbon to the soil, and thus avoid burning residue, can cut emissions, improve water efficiency and increase yields in a climate of unreliable rainfall. For a fashion and luxury ecosystem that’s coming under increasing fire for upstream emissions, supporting regenerative supply sheds is both climate strategy as well as procurement—it’s why corporate LPs in funds including Mirova’s are buying in to high-quality, traceable credits.
How Varaha’s Model of Regeneration Works
Varaha, founded in 2022, develops and manages carbon projects in regenerative agriculture, agroforestry and biochar. Its main Kheti (agriculture) initiative supports farmers in Haryana and Punjab to transition to lower-emission alternatives, with field execution provided by 48 local partners and real-time monitoring software that maps climate and social impacts.
The program focuses on practices adapted to India’s rice-wheat systems: direct seeding of rice to reduce water and energy, incorporating crop residues into the soil instead of burning them, and less tillage to preserve soil structure and carbon. The company’s on-the-ground focus is practical — farmers need machines to alter how they sow and treat residues. Funds will be used for the purchase and large-scale deployment of direct seeders, happy seeders, super seeders, etc., so that adoption is not limited by lack of equipment.
Varaha says Kheti already extends over 200,000 hectares and should cover some 337,000 farmers on around 675,000 hectares as it scales up. Carbon revenue is shared with participating farmers, providing a new income stream overlying agronomic benefits such as enhanced soil health and possibly more stable yields.
Verification And Standards For Varaha’s Carbon Credits
Credits generated in the program will be created under Verra’s VM0042 methodology for agricultural land management, with project stakeholders also working towards being issued Verra Climate, Community & Biodiversity certification to add co-benefits to their credits.
While Verra has been under scrutiny in recent years, Varaha says it adopted the registry’s soil carbon methodology because of its scientific rigor and that it is not exclusive to any one standard—working with Puro and Isometric as well where suitable.
Measurement, reporting and verification are guided by field data combined with remote sensing and modelled baselines to measure emissions reductions and removals. This focus on transparent MRV is being increasingly required by buyers and fits well with quality standards promoted by organisations such as the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market.
Varaha’s legitimacy was also enhanced by a global biochar carbon removal agreement with Google, for which the tech company has committed to buying 100,000 tons of removal credits by 2030. That deal is just one example of increasing corporate hunger for engineered and nature-based solutions with well-defined permanence and traceability.
Scale, Inclusion And Execution Risks For Regenerative Farming
Going from pilots to adoption on a province-scale will depend upon logistics and economics. Thousands of machines, a timely service and training are required for direct seeding and residue incorporation. Varaha intends to use Mirova’s capital to ameliorate some of those gaps while increasing farmer enrollment and support.
The company also plans to ramp up gender inclusion programs targeted to women farmers, a segment that has often been sidelined in agtech rollouts. If it works, the approach could provide a package of benefits — lower input costs, enhanced soil fertility, relief from water stress and cleaner air in areas choking to death on seasonal residue burning.
India’s net-zero goals (and its states’ climate-smart agriculture incentives) create policy tailwinds, but the same questions that underlie soil carbon projects everywhere still need addressing: demonstrating additionality, handling variability from field to field and maintaining outcomes over time. Thus here, forward credit structures and verifiable commitment could help align incentives and establish trust with the buyers.
For Mirova and its corporate sponsors, the bet is that high-integrity, farmer-first projects will create credits they can count on while de-risking supply chains.
Varaha would, with its target of just over 675,000 hectares, be one such regional bellwether for scalable regenerative agriculture if it’s successful. The next challenge is execution — delivering the tools, training and the trust to millions of acres just when India’s farm systems need them most.
