France-based CarbonFarm Technology, a climate tech startup, announced that it has raised €2.5M in its seed round of funding.
The round was led by Racine² in partnership with Serena and Makesense. TechMind, Ponderosa Ventures, AgFunder, Climate Capital, and BPI France also participated in the round.
CarbonFarm Technology says the funding will assist its mission in the proliferation of sustainable yet profitable rice farming and production activities in Asia, Africa, and South America – regions renowned for their significant number of farmland to grow rice for local and global consumption.
Vassily Carantino, CEO of CarbonFarm Technology, says, “Our vision of the world is one where farmers would turn to regenerative practices, not out of goodwill, but because it is more profitable.”
Unsustainable rice industry practices
The main focus of CarbonFarm Technology is the decarbonisation of rice farming and production, agricultural practices that have left climate experts worried over their surprising numbers of carbon footprint levels.
Rice farming and production make up 12 per cent of global methane emissions and 1.5 per cent of total greenhouse gas emissions. From each ton of harvested rice, a ton of rice stubble and straw would have been excised, resulting in tons of rice stubble and straw waste products.
Further aggravating the issue is the field burning to make room for more crops. The practice causes a surge in carbon dioxide emissions and other dangerous chemical reactions including carbon monoxide, methane, nitrogen oxides, and sulphur oxides.
Excessive water consumption is also a concern in the rice farming industry. About 3,000 to 5,000 litres of fresh water is needed to produce one kilo of rice, which forces experts in the industry to find more resource-efficient alternatives to produce the same amount of rice.
Decarbonising the staple grain
CarbonFarm Technology dedicates its expertise to providing easy access to carbon markets for farmers and agribusinesses, and end-to-end support, including project design, satellite-based MRV, and certification and credit sales handling.
The startup also collaborates with corporations by offering trustworthy, registry-certified, and satellite-verified credits to reduce carbon emissions.
Satellites and AI make up the bulk of CarbonFarm Technology’s technological resources to record accurate levels of carbon emissions of each rice field. They also provide cost-efficient solutions with no biassed results, thanks to the reduced levels of human intervention in monitoring the emission footprints.
The company has rapidly expanded its operations over the past year, collaborating with industry giants such as Mars Food, Danone, and Ebro on transformative projects across leading rice-producing regions in Vietnam, India, Spain, Portugal, and Ghana.
The most recent and prominent project by CarbonFarm Technology is its role in supporting rice production with lower carbon emissions in Vietnam through satellite technology since November 2022. The startup is responsible for developing MRV systems for the initiative and supervising the carbon credit process from MRV to certification in the sale.
Read the orginal article: https://siliconcanals.com/news/startups/carbonfarm-technology-bags-2-5m/
