Telangana to boost eco-friendly farming practices, blockchain is a factor

Hyderabad: Telangana government is planning to make farming in the state more eco-friendly and use blockchain-based solutions to make it happen.

The goal is to help farmers participate in organic farming, agroforestry, crop rotation, and solar power harvesting. These will lower greenhouse gas emissions and carbon sequestration (the process of capturing and storing atmospheric carbon dioxide to prevent excessive emissions), reported NDTV.

An official statement from the Telangana government said that deploying blockchain-based traceability will enable funding. It will also provide infrastructure to monitor and record sustainable processes, generate credits according to recognised registries, and finally access markets for liquidation and fund realisation.

AlgoBharat, an India-centric initiative of the green Algorand blockchain, has joined Telangana in the Web3 initiative. "Our solution with Algorand will automate and democratise the process so that even our farmers have access to the same opportunities as large corporations," said the Principal Secretary Jayesh Ranjan.

Carbon credits are going to be a crucial factor in the new system. It is a permit for owners to emit a certain amount of carbon dioxide or any other greenhouse gas without legal consequences. One credit will allow the emission of one ton of carbon dioxide or the equivalent of other greenhouse gases.

A company will be able to earn carbon credits by reducing its carbon footprint. These credits can then be sold or traded for financial profit. The significant documentation and complexity make these sustainable credits hard to track with traditional methods. The process is also unaffordable to many for the same reason.

AlgoBharat has partnered with ecosystem companies building on Algorand to generate verifiably sustainable credits. The goal is to make the process cost-effective for farmers.

Aogrand is a green, proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain. It was released in 2019. Developers say that it enables the convergence between decentralised finance (DeFi) and traditional finance.

AlgoBharat told NDTV that blockchain technology ensures transparency, traceability, and accountability in the generation of sustainable credits. "Farmers will have the ability to record and verify their sustainable farming practices on the blockchain. They will be empowered to generate verifiable credits that can be traded on carbon markets, creating new revenue streams for the farmers and other populations whose livelihoods are critical to Bharat's robust economy."