Stubble Burning

Subject – Environment

Context – Roots Foundation to sensitise farmers on stubble burning

Concept –

Stubble burning in northern India has long been a major cause of air pollution, but efforts to stop it fail every year.
Untreated rice straw takes 4-8 weeks to disintegrate which is too long for the average farmer to wait to be able to sow the winter wheat crop.
- The other option is to employ farm labour, who will cut the stalk and pile it into bundles, but that’s expensive and unaffordable for more than 95% of the farmers.

To know about stubble burning, please click here.

To know about Pusa Decomposer, please click here.

Solutions to the burning problem

In 2014, the Union government released the National Policy for Management of Crop Residue. Since then, crop residue management has helped make the soil more fertile, thereby resulting in savings of Rs 2,000/hectare from the farmer’s manure cost.
Farmers can also manage crop residues effectively by employing agricultural machines like:
- Happy Seeder(used for sowing of crop in standing stubble)
- Rotavator (used for land preparation and incorporation of crop stubble in the soil)
- Zero till seed drill (used for land preparations directly sowing of seeds in the previous crop stubble)
- Baler (used for collection of straw and making bales of the paddy stubble)
- Paddy Straw Chopper (cutting of paddy stubble for easily mixing with the soil)
- Reaper Binder (used for harvesting paddy stubble and making into bundles)