Burn On! What's Burning, Punjab?
The farmers' plight seems to be never-ending. This time, its something in Punjab. Read on.
In our last write-up on farmers, we talked about their plight and possible solutions to their problems (read it here). Today we are going to talk about a particular governance issue which is affecting not just the farmers, but every citizen.
Air pollution has become a major problem. This has aggravated more in the State of Punjab, where farmers are burning “stubble.” Every year, in the month of October and November, the issue of stubble burning comes to light.
The sad thing is, our political leaders are busy with their usual “blame game,” and nobody wants to solve the problem strategically.
So, do farmers practice this on purpose? If yes, why? Don’t they have any other choice?
Let's find out.
In the month of October, after paddy (Kharif season crop) is harvested, it leaves a residue called paddy straw, which is mostly useless. This crop residue is called stubble.
The paddy straws which are leftover are 8-12 inches tall. Before sowing the seeds for the next season, this stubble has to be cleared off.
Now, clearing off this residue costs money (which the farmers don’t have). They need to spend on machinery and manual labour. Moreover, this clearing off process has to be completed as fast as possible because the crops for the next season have to be sown within the next 15-20 days to get the maximum yield.
Since the farmers don't have enough resources and time in hand, they opt for an easier, time saving and cost-effective method.
Burn the residue.
This practice, though prohibited, continues in many parts of India, particularly Punjab for want of cheaper and faster technology.
What has the Government done about it?
Since agriculture is a state affair, it is the duty of the State Governments to keep stubble burning under control.
The Punjab Government, for example, earmarks crores of rupees every year to provide machinery to farmers at subsidised rates for clearing the crop residue.
There are three types of machinery which the Government feels can do the work:
Even though such schemes exist, the adoption rate is very low.
Maybe the problem lies elsewhere?
In India, the farmers mostly grow crops on small or marginal lands (up to 2 hectares of land). Thus, the income of farmers is very low.
Anti-stubble machines cost more than Rs. 1,00,000, and are not affordable by the farmers. Even if the farmer thinks of buying these machines, there are additional costs like petrol and machine parts to be incurred to operate them which again demotivate the farmers to buy such machines.
There are problems with these machines too.
If a farmer uses a Happy Seeder to remove the stubble and sow the seeds for the next season, in most cases the seeds do not mix with the soil properly, which prevents proper germination. This again adds to the cost of the farmer to deploy manual labour to mix the soil and seeds properly.
The Government, in order to reduce the costs for the farmers, started leasing out the Happy Seeder Machines to different villages.
But again the problem could not be solved.
The number of machines required and the number of machines available did not match.
A Happy Seeder machine can clear 10 acres of land in a day and most villages have 1000s of acres of land and only a handful of these machines are available. In an industry where timing is everything, even with the machines available, the farmers have to turn to stubble burning.
The farmers are so anxious about all of this, that they are even willing to give it away at no cost. Someone just remove the damned waste!
So, how to solve this?
Maybe by developing strong infrastructure and a logistics arm to support.
Stubble, when processed in factories, can be used as a great alternative to fertilizers. It can be turned into useful manure. Also, biomass fuel plants can be set up where fuel could be generated using this as a raw material.
This will also require logistics support.
Better logistics (storing and moving) can help in collecting the stubble from farmers and transporting them to the factories.
This kills 2 birds with one stone.
The problem of stubble burning reduces and a clean and environment-friendly source of fuel and fertilizers can be made and used.
Have any other creative ideas to solve this problem? Hit us up on WhatsApp! We would love to hold a session around this and brainstorm for possible solutions.
Hope to hear from you soon, ReadOn.
By: Pranav Agarwal
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