LocationsScaling Climate Solutions: How TerraTrack Is Turning Data into Action for Farmers
April 22, 2026
Co-founder Vaibhav Jain talking to a rice farmer in Tikola village, district Sonipat, Haryana, India
Around the world, farmers are on the frontlines of climate change, balancing the urgent need to protect livelihoods with the growing pressure to reduce emissions and conserve natural resources. In India, where rice is central to food security and rural economies, this challenge is particularly stark. Traditional rice cultivation can be water intensive and a significant source of methane emissions, yet solutions must work for farmers, not against them.
This is where innovation becomes critical. TerraTrack, a climate technology initiative supported through the Youth4Climate initiative, is working to make sustainable rice farming practices measurable, trustworthy, and financially viable. The initiative uses satellite-based monitoring to verify methane reductions from improved water management practices, helping unlock climate finance while strengthening farmer resilience.
In this conversation, co-founders Vaibhav and Andrew share what inspired their work, how their solution operates in practice, and why scalable, farmer-centred innovation is essential for climate action.
Co-founders Vaibhav Jain and Andrew Wells
Q1. What first led you to build TerraTrack, and what problem were you seeing on the ground that felt too urgent to ignore?
Vaibhav:
TerraTrack grew from two ideas that eventually came together. During my graduate studies in Climate Economics, I became interested in short-lived climate pollutants like methane, which can deliver rapid climate benefits when reduced. At the same time, I was exploring carbon accounting solutions as climate regulations expanded globally.
I then came across methane emissions from continuously flooded rice fields. It’s a significant source of emissions that remains unaddressed largely due to measurement and verification issues. That’s when it clicked for me - this was a problem that was both urgent and solvable.
Andrew:
When Vaibhav shared the idea after the Youth4Climate event, what stood out was its simplicity. The solution, Alternate Wetting and Drying, already existed. The real bottleneck was measurement and verification. TerraTrack focuses exactly there, using remote sensing to make something invisible measurable.
Q2. For readers discovering TerraTrack for the first time, how would you explain what the project does and why it matters?
Andrew:
TerraTrack measures and verifies methane reductions from rice farming by tracking Alternate Wetting and Drying, a method where fields are periodically drained instead of continuously flooded. This reduces methane emissions without affecting yields.
The benefits go beyond emissions. The approach can save significant water and produce rice with lower arsenic content, making it nutritionally safer. Yet adoption remains limited because farmers lack incentives and confidence in changing practices. TerraTrack solves this by making these practices measurable and verifiable using satellite data to track periodic drying, allowing climate finance to flow directly to farmers and turning a known solution into something that scales.
Q3. Rice sits at the heart of food security in India, but it also comes with major climate and water challenges. How does TerraTrack respond to that tension in a practical way?
Vaibhav:
The challenge, for us in India, is to reduce environmental impact without compromising farmer livelihoods or food security. What makes our approach practical is that farmers do not have to sacrifice productivity. They can lower input costs through lower water, energy, and chemical use, improve grain quality, and potentially earn additional income through carbon credits. Our role is to make these benefits measurable and verifiable at scale so sustainability and profitability move together.
Co-founder Vaibhav Jain and project mentor Prof. Mohsin Khan talking to farmers near Tikola village, district Sonipat, Haryana, India
Q4. A big part of your model is making methane reduction measurable through satellite-based monitoring. Why is better data and verification so important for scaling solutions like Alternate Wetting and Drying?
Andrew:
Without credible measurement, climate finance cannot reach farmers and solutions cannot scale. Many current systems rely on self-reporting or limited field data, which can be costly and unreliable.
Satellite-based monitoring changes that. It allows water management and methane reductions to be observed consistently across thousands of fields. Once reductions can be trusted and verified, financing mechanisms become viable and farmers can be rewarded for adopting climate-friendly practices.
Q5. India’s climate agenda is increasingly focused on implementation and solutions that deliver benefits across mitigation, resilience, and livelihoods. Where do you see TerraTrack aligning with those priorities?
Vaibhav:
TerraTrack aligns closely with India’s development priorities because it addresses climate action alongside economic outcomes. It enables methane reduction from rice cultivation, strengthens resilience through water savings and improved soil health, and supports livelihoods by reducing costs and creating new income opportunities.
So it’s very much in line with India’s push for solutions - especially tech-enabled ones - that deliver across mitigation, resilience, and livelihoods simultaneously, and at scale.
Q6. What does receiving support from Youth4Climate make possible for TerraTrack at this stage, and what comes next for the project?
Vaibhav:
Support from Youth4Climate comes at a critical moment as we move from early validation to real-world deployment. It allows us to pilot and refine our technology, strengthen our verification systems, and build partnerships with farmers and implementation agencies.
Looking ahead, our focus is on scaling. We want to expand pilots, demonstrate reliability across regions, and show that climate solutions can deliver measurable impact while improving farmer livelihoods.
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Youth4Climate (Y4C) is a global initiative, launched in May 2022, co-led by the Government of Italy and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The initiative has its Secretariat at the UNDP Rome Centre for Climate Action and Energy Transition, and is supported by the Italian Ministry of Environment and Energy Security and the 8x1000 funds of the Italian Buddhist Institute Soka Gakkai.
Y4C brings together existing and new online and offline resources, tools, capacities, partnerships, networks and movements led by and designed for youth, with a strong focus on the implementation of solutions, for a more sustained impact on climate on the ground. It aims to foster an inclusive, safe and enabling environment for youth to lead and partner with other stakeholders on climate action.
For more information about the initiative, visit the Youth4Climate platform.
