Prizes and PRANA+: An Interview with The Nature Conservancy about Pay-for-Results Design
As part of a broader push to promote its Pay-for-Results (PfR) prize model among other organizations, AgResults began collaborating with The Nature Conservancy (TNC) in early 2024 to incorporate a PfR prize competition within its ambitious Promoting Regenerative And No-burn Agriculture (PRANA+) program in the Northwest Indian state of Punjab. Long considered the breadbasket of India, Punjab has seen its farmers and environment strain under the increasing intensification of the rice-wheat cropping system, which dominates over 80% of the region’s gross cropped area. Government policy and long-held practices aimed at increasing productivity have further entrenched harmful production practices, such as crop residue burning and high input use, which in turn generate damaging greenhouse gas (GHG) and particulate emissions while depleting soil health and water reserves.
A follow on to TNC’s earlier PRANA program, PRANA+ aims to address these issues by enhancing agricultural productivity, resource conservation, and farmers’ economic well-being in the NW Indian foodscape through the adoption of water-efficient and emission-reducing rice growing practices. By the end of June 2026, PRANA will have conducted about 40,000 village meetings and established more than 6,500 demonstrations, aiming to convert 220,000 farmers to using no-burn practices. PRANA+ will build off this momentum with farmer outreach, demonstration plots, and extension service support. In contrast to the first iteration of the program, which focused on farmer outreach, PRANA+ is oriented towards building institutions at the village level that can continue providing crop residue management (CRM)1 services.
Additionally, in close collaboration with AgResults, TNC has incorporated a prize competition component into PRANA+ that will award monetary prizes to agricultural service providers (“competitors”) who deliver CRM and direct-seeded rice (DSR)2 services to paddy rice farmers in Punjab. These prizes aim to spur and mature the market for sustainable services by helping competitors overcome market barriers, scale operations, and establish market linkages that continue to grow and mature after the incentives end. In turn, the increased availability and adoption of sustainable services will reduce the resource intensity of paddy production while enhancing a range of environmental and farmer outcomes, including reduced GHG emissions, better human and soil health, lower production costs, and higher productivity. As one component of the broader PRANA+ program, the prize competition will contribute to TNC’s overall goal of encouraging local implementation of sustainable practices to address multiple challenges within the Punjab foodscape and create regenerative food systems.
The prize competition component of PRANA+ launches as a pilot this spring ahead of the kharif season3 and will continue for four consecutive harvest seasons, allowing programming to adapt between cycles as challenges emerge and conditions evolve. As the PRANA+ program prepares for the competition’s launch, we sat down with TNC India’s Field Operations Manager Bhaskar Rattan to get his perspective on collaborating with AgResults and the Pay-for-Results model.
How did TNC first get involved with AgResults?
Bhaskar Rattan (BR): One of our key challenges was figuring out a way to make crop residue management, through in-situ practices,4 a self-sustained model without much outside intervention. AgResults and its prize competition approach came to us as an answer to this challenge. By incorporating an incentive structure to engage primary stakeholders via awards, we hope to enhance our approach for addressing environmental challenges in Punjab.
Could you briefly describe AgResults’ role in designing part of the upcoming PRANA+ project?
BR: AgResults has provided us with the necessary understanding of the model and presented us with their learning from other parts of the globe where similar programs are running. This has provided us with the ability to better plan and address the challenges that might arise during implementation. We are also encouraged by the ability to make incremental changes to the prize competition over time as and when market dynamics and other environmental factors change.
What does the upcoming PRANA+ project hope to achieve? What are the prize competition elements?
BR: AgResults is being piloted in our project area under the PRANA+ transition. Through this, we aim to reduce crop residue burning in high-burn villages by 50% and increase the adoption of DSR by 25% over the next three years by strengthening the network of service providers who provide in-situ CRM and DSR services. The prize competition awards competitors cash prizes for each new acre of paddy rice that they service with DSR (Rs 200/acre) and CRM (Rs 300/acre). Once the competition concludes, competitors with the highest cumulative performance across both services will receive grand prizes totaling ~10% of all prize money disbursed. An additional 10% award will be payable to farmer producer companies / organizations based off the total prize money earned by their members in their respective verticals.
What about the AgResults Pay-for-Results model or prize design process was initially appealing to TNC?
BR: In PRANA+, AgResults’ prize competition model addresses the key challenge of strengthening service providers; these stakeholders are as important as farmers. The majority of programs are designed for farmers, and as a result, these service providers are often overlooked. But service providers are integral to the transition to regenerative agriculture, and this is where AgResults focuses. Through the competition, service providers are incentivized to provide sustainable services and scale up their operations to a full-fledged business model. To ensure ongoing customer demand and the long-term viability of their business, competitors must build relationships with farmers, create linkages that can be further developed in the future to conduct outreach, provide additional extension services, and strengthen engagement overall. It is very important to move from a capacity building approach towards a self-sustaining approach, and the AgResults model has huge potential to help with this.
AgResults’ collaboration with TNC demonstrates that the PfR prize competition model can be effectively designed to complement “push” development initiatives. AgResults anticipates the prize competition’s pilot will demonstrate promising results that drive competitor participation and program scale in subsequent years, while concurrent technical assistance under the broader PRANA+ program will build providers’ capacity to enhance their service offerings. By combining both “push” and “pull” mechanisms, PRANA+ is positioned to augment and sustain program results, ultimately enhancing environmental and economic outcomes for farmers.
- CRM includes a range of in-situ services that eliminate the chance of residue burning. In-situ practices involve handling leftover plant materials directly in the field after harvest. Instead of burning or removing these residues, they are incorporated back into the soil through methods like mulching, composting, or using specialized machinery. This approach helps improve soil health, reduce pollution, and enhance overall agricultural sustainability.
- DSR is a practice where rice is sown directly into the field as opposed to being transplanted as a seedling. This reduces water use and greenhouse gas emissions.
- Kharif season, running from approximately May to October, is the period when various monsoon crops, including rice, are sown and harvested. These crops are dependent on heavy rainfall.
- See footnote 1.
