--- title: a rice paddy is not a methane credit canonical_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/a-rice-paddy-is-not-a-credit markdown_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/a-rice-paddy-is-not-a-credit.md subtitle: "the water and the soil are the field. the tonne is someone else's product." category: ecosystem-services --- # a rice paddy is not a methane credit *the water and the soil are the field. the tonne is someone else's product.* Rice paddy water is the flood a field holds. On the Mekong, that flood is the living thing, and the soil under it is the other half. Stand on a bund in the wet season and the water meets you first, brown with the soil it sits on, the rice standing in it. The crop is living in that water. The ground beneath it is what lets the water stay. Some accounts of these fields lead with a gas counted in the flood. The rice is standing in the water, on the soil. ## what rice paddy water is Rice paddy water is water a flooded field holds and then lets go. Held, the bund keeps the flood where the roots are. Released, the water moves back toward the canal. The soil is what keeps the flood from vanishing while the rice is in it. Water and soil together are the paddy, which is what the rice requires. The Mekong rice plain depends on the river still sending fresh water the canals can carry. The field depends on that water staying fit for a crop to stand in. The same fact runs the other way. Farmers depend on the water inside their bunds. A company that buys the harvest depends on the grain those bunds still yield. People who eat from the delta depend on the plain remaining a rice plain. Can Tho is the door into the plain, not the name of the living system. On 2 September 2026, New Forests described about 8,000 hectares as Green Carbon's current operations. "Current operations" is their phrase. It is not a registry extract and not a surveyed polygon. The memorandum in that release has not deployed capital. An Giang is another field of the same kind. A Green Carbon page dated 24 April 2025 records a finished demonstration of about 100 hectares across three crop cycles. Battambang, in Cambodia, is a third. The 2025 wet season on the Kamping Puoy scheme covered 1,089.66 hectares and 386 farmers, on a page stamped 27 February 2026. Three places, three figures, one kind of living field. The figures stay separate. ## what they measured in the water On that Battambang season, Green Carbon's result records water from 16,150 to 10,850 cubic metres per hectare. The pair is their measurement of the water on Kamping Puoy, not a baseline adopted here and not a threshold for the next farm. The same result records irrigation cycles from 11 to 7, and yield from 5,011 to 5,200 kilograms per hectare. On their accounting the recorded volume moved from the higher figure to the lower one, and a crop still left the field. The practice they use has a name, alternate wetting and drying, and the way it is done stays with the people who already schedule the water. Green Carbon operates the cited hectares and develops the credit. At Kamping Puoy the water-user associations schedule the water. Named with them are the Royal University of Agriculture, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, and the provincial department. That is the work already carrying these fields. Green Carbon, the associations, and the ministry remain the people doing it, not the buyers of the paddy. Funding for the water and the soil can sit beside them. The cubic metres are the operator's record of that season. ## the tonne is their product The same season carries a gas figure. On the Battambang 2025 wet season, Green Carbon reported methane 77.07% lower, at 3.48 tCO2e per hectare, and that figure is their credit arithmetic, the product they sell, not a price of the water or the soil. The credit can keep the buyer it already has. The flood inside the bund is still a flood, and the ground under it is still ground a root can use. From outside the bund, people ask for the figure, because it travels. From the bund, the next planting is the point. ## the soil under the flood The soil is the basin the water sits in, the half of the field a root actually touches. Saturated, it feeds the crop, and a gas forms in it. The count of that gas can leave in a report. The soil stays, waiting on the next water. [Healthy soils](/healthy-soils.ensurance?from=guide) maps that ground: the condition the crop keeps requiring, named as soil rather than as a reading taken off it. The [food](/food.ensurance?from=guide) map is the harvest, the sack and the meal, the grain that leaves. The harvest is not the water that grew it, and not the soil that held the water. Call the harvest the field, and the water drops out of the account when the truck leaves. ## the field before the product Those flooded fields, the water they hold, and the soil under them are there whether or not anyone buys a certificate. The flood is real on the bund before any sale. A buyer who already takes the harvest can fund the living paddy the harvest comes from. Ensurance is how that buyer funds the paddy. Ensurance is not the paddy. It is not the methane credit, and it is not the river. A certificate means funding pointed at that living thing: water held and released, and the soil under it. This series is the field. The water let in at the gate and the soil kept inside the bund are what the harvest and the credit both require. Funding can name that paddy beside the rice already purchased and beside the credit already sold. The grain revenue stays with the grain sale. The field work stays with the people already doing it. | reading | the field | the tonne | | --- | --- | --- | | What it is | Water the paddy holds and releases, and the soil under that water | A gas the operator counts on the flooded soil and sells | | Whose record | Their cubic metres for one wet season, not a baseline anyone else must adopt | Their credit arithmetic, not a price of the paddy | | Who depends | The farmers in the scheme, the buyer of the grain, the delta that eats | A buyer of the credit the operator sells | | What funding names | The living paddy, so the next season can still be a season | The product, which already has a seller | The field is what a hand can point at: water inside the bund, soil under the water, rice standing in both. :::johnson **a flooded field is the plain.** The water it holds is what the river still gives the crop, and the soil under that water is the field. [suggest mekong rice →](/specific/create?mode=suggest&agent=water-abundance.ensurance&name=mekong%20rice&from=guide) ::: ## a line for the water and the soil The line is called mekong rice. It sits under [water-abundance.ensurance](/water-abundance.ensurance?from=guide), a parent agent already live for water. The line is in ideation. It can be named and reviewed before anyone treats it as live. It is a line, not a policy: funding named to the paddy's water and soil, with no titleholder in hand. You can co-create it; a person reviews it; the parent agent receives it. [Suggest mekong rice](/specific/create?mode=suggest&agent=water-abundance.ensurance&name=mekong%20rice&from=guide) under that parent, from this page. Where the question starts from the land, begin at the [landowner door](/solutions/landowners?from=guide&topic=mekong-rice). The water parent is where the line belongs. The soil map is the other half of the same field. The food map remains the harvest a rice buyer already knows how to pay for. Where the rivers and the gates allow, the next wet season puts water on this soil again. The line names that water and that soil, beside the buyer of the credit and the buyer of the harvest. ## frequently asked questions ### what is rice paddy water? Rice paddy water is the water a flooded rice field holds and then releases, together with the soil under it. The plain depends on fresh water from the Mekong, and the people who farm, buy, and eat the rice depend on the field still holding it. Battambang's 2025 wet season on Kamping Puoy recorded 16,150 to 10,850 cubic metres per hectare. That pair is Green Carbon's measurement of their season, not a baseline for any other field. ### is a rice paddy the same thing as a methane credit? The paddy is the water and the soil. The credit is a product Green Carbon develops from a gas counted on the flooded soil of hectares they operate. A season can carry a crop and a credit together. Selling the product leaves the field what it was: water the rice stands in, and the soil that holds that water. ### how can the water and the soil be funded? The line mekong rice, under water-abundance.ensurance, is in ideation for that water and soil. You can co-create it; a person reviews it; the parent agent receives it. The line sits beside the harvest and beside the credit, and it funds the living field. The people already scheduling the water keep that work. ## sources - New Forests, 2 September 2026, describing about 8,000 hectares as Green Carbon's current operations. The memorandum is not capital deployed. https://newforests.com/insight/green-carbon-signs-mou-with-new-forests/ - Green Carbon, 24 April 2025, on the finished An Giang demonstration of about 100 hectares across three crop cycles, and on Loc Troi named for Japonica export quality. https://green-carbon.co.jp/en/enverralistsfirstricepaddyproject/ - Green Carbon, Battambang 2025 wet-season results, page stamp 27 February 2026, on 1,089.66 hectares, 386 farmers, the Kamping Puoy scheme, and that season's water log. https://green-carbon.co.jp/en/green-carbon-announces-results-of-cambodias-largest-awd-project-cambodia-2025-wet-season-awd-project-report-now-available-as-a-free-download/ - Vietnam News and Vietnamnet, 23 May 2024, reporting the company's 21 May statement on Mekong Delta winter-spring rice purchased by mid-April 2024. https://vietnamnet.vn/en/loc-troi-pays-rice-farmers-after-delay-apologises-2283577.html - Vietnam Plus, ahead of the 2024–25 dry season, citing the Irrigation Department of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, for that article's description of the delta. https://en.vietnamplus.vn/mekong-delta-faces-increased-saltwater-intrusion-in-2024-25-dry-season-post306656.vnp ## the series Can Tho is the door. The subject is the rice field's water and soil. - [can tho stands on a rice plain](/guide/what-the-mekong-rice-plain-depends-on) - [who depends on mekong rice](/guide/who-depends-on-mekong-rice) - [a rice paddy is not a methane credit](/guide/a-rice-paddy-is-not-a-credit) - [the salt that reaches the rice](/guide/the-salt-that-reaches-the-rice) - [who already pays for the mekong rice field](/guide/who-already-pays-for-mekong-rice)