Rize is turning rice farming into a methane-reduction business

A flooded rice field produces methane as organic matter decomposes without oxygen. One way to reduce those emissions is surprisingly simple: flood the field, let it dry, then flood it again, more than once before harvest. The practice is called alternate wetting and drying, or AWD.

What happened

On 16 July 2026, Singapore-based Rize said it had raised USD 31 million to scale AWD with smallholders in Vietnam and Indonesia. The equity portion was USD 20 million, led by BNP Paribas Asset Management Alts, with The Rockefeller Foundation joining. Temasek and Breakthrough Energy Ventures renewed earlier commitments. A further USD 11 million of debt was catalysed by BIDV, Temasek Foundation and UOB. The round brings Rize's total funding to USD 47 million.

Rize says its work now covers 17,000 smallholders and more than 50,000 hectares, with 1,500 metric tonnes of low-emission rice shipped to Europe, Canada, Australia and Singapore. It also says AWD can cut methane by up to 50%, reduce water use by 20 to 30% and increase farmer income by up to 30% without reducing yield.

Those numbers vary by project. An An Giang note from September 2025 put methane reduction at up to 45%, while a Central Java trial Rize described in May 2026, covering 93 hectares, reported a reduction of 30 to 35%. They come from different contexts and should not be averaged.

Gold Standard methodology 437, published in July 2023, treats AWD as a change from continuous to intermittent flooding. It does not simply turn a company-reported methane reduction into a carbon credit. The methodology calculates baseline and project emissions using emission factors, with different approaches depending on the scale of the project and the measurements available.

For the simplified route available to small and micro-scale projects, multiple drainage carries a 0.55 factor against 1.0 for continuous flooding, and the calculated emission reductions are then reduced by 15% for uncertainty. The methodology also provides routes using measured emission factors. Rize says its Gold Standard certification is still in progress and forecasts more than 1 million credits over five years.

What it means

The documents that name a payer are about farm inputs, not a separate payment for methane reduction.

In the Winter-Spring 2024 season in Long An, Rize, Olam Agri VN and the Cay Trom cooperative ran 300 hectares of rice for European residue limits, rather than as an AWD purchase. Rize supplied inputs on credit. At harvest, Olam paid the cooperative and withheld that cost until Rize was repaid.

In May 2025, the Rabo Foundation extended IDR 10 billion to PT Rize Farm Indonesia for inputs in West and Central Java. Neither arrangement establishes a separate farmer payment for methane reduction, or what income would remain if the buyer, lender or programme stopped.

Vietnam is also running a much larger low-emission rice programme, but those hectares are not Rize's. IRRI's account of a Ministry of Agriculture and Environment review in Vi Thanh on 8 March 2026 put the One Million Hectares programme at 354,839 hectares. IRRI also reported a first 500 metric tonnes of certified low-emission rice exported to Japan.

The pilot it describes at Go Gon cooperative in Tay Ninh used row seeding and fertiliser placement. AWD is not the practice named there. Those hectares and tonnes should therefore stay separate from Rize's figures.

There are really two economic mechanisms here. One is input credit, repaid out of the harvest. The other is the potential value of methane reductions, which can become carbon credits only through the relevant accounting and certification process.

Rize says its field records include agronomists and GPS-stamped photos. That provides evidence of what is happening on the farm, but it is not by itself the same as the emission measurement and accounting routes set out in the Gold Standard methodology.

The Series B gives Rize more capital to scale the model. It does not publish a price for the methane reductions. A Central Java memorandum with Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory was renewed for five years and names a production target, but does not establish what happens to the farmer economics after that period.

The round is real, and Vietnam's wider low-emission rice programme is real. What remains less clear is whether a smallholder can keep the practice, or the income attached to it, when the offtake or financing behind it ends.

What to watch

• A carbon methodology with a name. Whether Rize's eventual Gold Standard filing identifies the methodology and estimation path used, and whether credits are actually issued rather than forecast. Gold Standard has also said Paris-aligned methodologies are required for vintage 2026 issuances.

• A repeat buyer paying for AWD. Whether a mill or rice buyer pays for rice grown under AWD without the programme separately financing the inputs. The named offtaker on file, Olam, appears in a season documented around residue limits, not an AWD purchase.

• Rize's tonnes stay separate. Whether Vietnam's certified low-emission rice shipment to Japan remains distinct from Rize's 1,500 metric tonnes. Nothing in the record reviewed here establishes that they are the same rice.