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Stubble Burning in India
Context:
Stubble burning remains a major issue despite environmental warnings, with 23,505 farm fires recorded across Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Delhi.
More on News:
- Farmers often resort to stubble burning due to reasons like failed crop output, time constraints, financial pressures, and low market prices. This practice worsens air quality, especially in Delhi, creating a toxic mixture of pollutants, including carbon emissions from vehicles.
- The surge in paddy farming—due to policies like subsidised fertilisers, minimum support price (MSP), and free electricity—has contributed to high crop residue and groundwater depletion. Paddy farming constitutes 41% of India’s total grain production.
What is Stubble Burning?
- Stubble Burning is a prevalent agricultural practice in India, particularly in the states of Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh.
- It involves the intentional burning of crop residue left in the fields after harvesting. This practice is primarily used to quickly clear fields for the next crop cycle.
- The practice of paddy-stubble burning not only contributes to severe air pollution but also results in irreparable loss of soil nutrients, which harms the long-term health of the soil.
Impacts:
- Air Pollution: Stubble burning releases large amounts of particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10), carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxides (NOx), and other pollutants into the atmosphere.
- This contributes to severe air pollution, especially in the northern regions of India, a major contributor to the winter smog in cities like Delhi.
- Soil Health: Continuous stubble burning can lead to the depletion of organic matter in the soil, affecting its fertility and structure.
- Health Issues: The pollutants from stubble burning can cause or exacerbate respiratory conditions such as asthma, bronchitis, and other lung diseases.
Government Efforts:
- Law and Enforcement: India’s environmental laws, such as the Air (Prevention and Control Pollution) Act (1981), clearly prohibit the burning of any material that causes pollution, including crop residues.
- The Supreme Court has even reiterated that stubble burning violates citizens’ fundamental right to a pollution-free environment.
- Funding: The Indian government has allocated a cumulative INR 3,333.17 crores since 2018 through the Crop Residue Management (CRM) programme to combat stubble burning. Despite these efforts, funds are insufficient.
- States like Punjab have requested an additional INR 1,200 crores but such demands have been rejected.
- Additionally, INR 1,151.80 crores of the allocated funds have been focused primarily on field-based residue management machinery, while other crucial initiatives like crop diversification remain underfunded.
Challenges:
- Meteorological Constraints: During winter, temperature inversion traps pollutants near the ground, exacerbating smog and pollution levels. The burning of crop residue adds significantly to existing urban emissions, compounding health and environmental risks.
- Economic and Time Pressures: Farmers resort to burning due to constraints such as tight timelines for field preparation and inadequate financial support for alternative solutions.
- Policies like the Punjab Preservation of Subsoil Water Act (2009), which limits paddy sowing to monsoon months to conserve water, has further contributed to this issue.
- Legislative Gaps: Despite penalties ranging from INR 2,500 to INR 30,000 for violating these laws, enforcement remains weak, and penalties are often difficult to collect. Additionally, harmful rice varieties like PUSA 44 are still grown despite their ban, further contributing to stubble burning.
- Equipment Inefficiencies: There are 150,000 CRM machines available, but many are either in need of repair or ineffective.
- Machines like happy seeders and super seeders require expensive tractors (60 horsepower), which farmers often cannot afford or use infrequently. Additionally, the waiting period to rent such equipment is long, adding to the burden on farmers.
Way Forward:
- Crop Diversification: Shifting from paddy to low-residue crops can drastically reduce the need for stubble burning. The government should expand the Minimum Support Price (MSP) list to include more crops and incentivise farmers to grow non-paddy crops.
- The Haryana model, which promotes direct seed technology and compensates farmers for adopting sustainable practices, can be replicated in other states.
- Strengthening Waste-to-Wealth Infrastructure: Scale up bio-energy production using crop residue, such as bio-ethanol plants, which can simultaneously address energy needs and reduce agricultural waste.
- Effective planning is required to utilise crop residue as animal fodder, helping address India’s significant fodder shortages.
- Digital Innovations and E-Platforms: Digital platforms like Krishi Yantra, developed by the Haryana government in collaboration with Deloitte, have helped reduce stubble burning incidents. These platforms enable farmers to rent machinery and monitor real-time information about crop residue management.
- Revisiting and Revising Policies: Modify the Preservation of Subsoil Water Act (2009) to apply only to water-scarce regions and avoid a blanket ban on early paddy sowing. Conduct cost-benefit analyses of CRM schemes to optimise fund allocation and ensure better utilisation.
- Education and Awareness: A survey showed that 44% of rural Indians believe stubble burning doesn’t contribute to air pollution, indicating the need for better public awareness.
- Air Monitoring and New Crop Varieties: Remote sensing technology needs improvement to track farm fires accurately, as discrepancies between actual fires and reported data have been noted.
- Additionally, PR 126, the recommended alternative to the PUSA 44 variety, has low yields and crop defects. There is a need for genome editing to improve crop quality and yield.
