Mati Carbon: Empowering Smallholder Farmers through Carbon Removal

With a focus on smallholder farmers, Mati Carbon is scaling carbon removal in a way that builds community resilience and supports rural economies. A recent winner of $50M in the XPRIZE Carbon Removal competition and a member of the Carbon Business Council, Mati is scaling enhanced weathering across the Global South—delivering verified carbon removal while improving soil health and boosting crop yields. With operations spanning India, Zambia, and Tanzania, and credits sold to buyers like Frontier and Shopify, Mati is leading the charge to bring high-integrity carbon removal to regions often overlooked in global climate investments yet on the frontlines of climate change impacts.

In this Q&A, Shantanu Agarwal Founder and CEO at Mati Carbon shares how they’re scaling responsibly across the Global South, creating local jobs, and building trust from the ground up.

Mati Carbon is one of many Carbon Business Council members leading the charge on carbon removal—and demonstrating what it looks like in practice. Explore the 100+ member companies driving economic growth around the world. The Carbon Business Council is publishing a content series spotlighting winners of XPRIZE Carbon Removal, a $100 million prize for removals companies.

Can you describe your carbon removal solution and what sets it apart?

Mati Carbon removes atmospheric CO₂ through enhanced weathering (EW) on smallholder farms. Finely crushed basalt is applied to fields, where it reacts with CO₂ in the soil to form stable bicarbonates that are ultimately transported to the ocean, locking carbon away for over 10,000 years. The process also improves soil health, boosts yields, and reduces fertilizer use.

What sets us apart is our full-stack approach to enable large-scale carbon removal while building climate resilience for the 100 million smallholder farmers in developing economies worldwide. We harness durable carbon dioxide removal (CDR), a robust monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) framework, and low-emission logistics to deliver a solution that is operationally scalable, financially viable, and rooted in community impact. It’s designed specifically for tropical geographies and smallholder systems, areas historically underserved in carbon markets.

What major breakthroughs or milestones did you achieve during the XPRIZE competition?

During the XPRIZE competition, Mati delivered the first engineered EW credits from the Global South to buyers like Frontier and Shopify, setting a new benchmark for high-integrity carbon removal in smallholder farming systems. We deployed over 150,000 tons of basalt across more than 15,000 acres, with field results showing an average 15% increase in crop yields and 65% of farmers reporting reduced pesticide use. 

We developed an agroecology-specific MRV stack and expanded our research capabilities. Our Chief Scientific Officer co-authored the landmark paper, “Initial Validation of a Soil-Based Mass-Balance Approach for Empirical Monitoring of Enhanced Rock Weathering Rates,” which was well received in the industry and has become a good reference for MRV in enhanced weathering. We also began operations in Zambia and Tanzania, extending our model to more climate-vulnerable farming communities.

How will these funds help scale your solution or business model?

The XPRIZE funds give Mati a strong runway to grow. We plan to use the prize to scale field operations into high-impact geographies across India, Africa, and Southeast Asia, deepen our R&D, and build out the science and infrastructure needed to deliver durable, verifiable carbon removal at gigaton scale. As we continue fundraising to achieve our ambition to serve over 100 million smallholder farmers across the world, the $50 million from XPRIZE is a major catalyst to scale our impact.

Do you have any examples or projections of how increased R&D will enable scale or reduce removal costs?

We are making significant R&D investments in scaling EW in a cost-effective manner, with a primary focus on reducing MRV costs while ensuring measurement integrity.

We’re creating the world’s largest EW dataset in smallholder settings. This dataset, developed from high-throughput sampling across diverse soil types and regions, will help us build robust models that gradually reduce the need for high-cost testing. As the dataset grows, we can increasingly rely on predictive analytics to streamline MRV processes and bring down the cost per ton of removal.

What does “scaling responsibly” look like in your corner of the carbon removal ecosystem?

Scaling responsibly in our work means grounding every ton of carbon removal in rigorous science and traceable impact. We invest heavily in field-based MRV using high-precision measurements tailored to smallholder settings. We treat every new agroecological zone as a distinct region—starting with feasibility studies, baseline testing, and localized trials. In each new region, we also partner with local agricultural universities to conduct trials tailored to local soils, crops, and farming practices. 

Our approach also includes very comprehensive community engagement work in every region in which we operate. Our focus is exclusively with smallholder farmers, providing all materials and support at no cost to them. We build trust through on-the-ground teams, farmer meetings, and local demonstrations. We actively involve government stakeholders early in the process to align with local priorities and ensure transparency.

Can you share any examples of working successfully with local communities around deployment?

Every region where we work begins with building trust and alignment with the local community. We start with awareness meetings with farmers, local stakeholders, farmer organizations, and sometimes district-level officials. These sessions are used to explain the EW process, listen to farmer concerns, and begin building relationships.
For example, in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, our teams spent weeks conducting village-level meetings, engaging with farmer groups, panchayat leaders, and local government officers. We share farmer testimonial videos and early impact stories from nearby regions to make the concept easier to understand and ease any concerns. These efforts have resulted in high levels of enrollment, strong word-of-mouth referrals, and greater farmer retention.

How does — or could — your solution benefit other industries or local communities?

Beyond carbon removal, our work supports rural job creation and community resilience. We operate in remote regions where job opportunities are limited, and our projects create local employment in logistics, fieldwork, and transportation. Most of our field staff are hired from the communities where we work keeping the benefits of carbon removal close to home.

What role do – or could – partnerships play in your success?

Our goal is to scale EW globally, and we know we can’t do it alone. Partnerships are key. We're building a platform that agritech companies,village entrepreneurs, and other organizations can use to run EW programs in their own regions. We will also work with governments to reach and enroll more farmers, especially in areas where institutional trust and outreach matter most.

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