New Delhi – India emitted roughly 31 million tonnes of methane in 2020, about 9 per cent of the global total, and agriculture is the largest source. It is also the source India has not addressed in its climate commitments.
Livestock leads, through enteric fermentation and manure. Paddy cultivation contributed around 3.2 million tonnes, roughly 23 per cent of agricultural methane, and rice emissions are projected to rise about 8 per cent by 2030.
The gap in the national commitment
India has not identified actions to reduce emissions from agriculture in its Nationally Determined Contributions. The national statement at COP30, delivered in November 2025, did not mention methane.
The omission is deliberate rather than accidental. Agricultural methane in India comes from smallholder farming and livestock owned by households with no alternative livelihood. A commitment to cut it is a commitment to intervene in the incomes of hundreds of millions of people, and no government makes that promise lightly.
Residue burning has become the visible half
A United Nations assessment released at COP30 identifies India as a global methane hotspot, driven substantially by stubble and waste burning, a trend running counter to global direction.
Residue burning is usually discussed as a Delhi air quality problem, which understates it. It is simultaneously a particulate emergency, a methane source and a soil carbon loss, and it happens because a farmer has about three weeks between harvest and sowing and burning is the cheapest way to clear a field.
Where mitigation is actually available
Alternate wetting and drying in paddy can cut methane substantially without reducing yield, because continuous flooding creates the anaerobic conditions that generate it. The obstacles are irrigation control, measurement and verification, and finance to bridge the transition.
Policy attention is beginning to organise around exactly those constraints. For food and beverage companies, paddy methane sits in Scope 3 agricultural sourcing, which is the hardest part of a value chain to measure and the part European due diligence rules increasingly ask about.
Source: United Nations Environment Programme methane assessment presented at COP30, and Indian agricultural emissions inventory data for 2020.
