Chandigarh : For all the tall talk of doing away with stubble burning on two million hectares in Punjab, an investment of just Rs 484 crore is needed with potential benefits of Rs 1,470 crore in two years plus the priceless advantage of a clean environment.Sounds like fiction, but this is what has been calculated by scientists using conservation agriculture (CA) techniques.
Talking to The Tribune on the sidelines of a seminar, Dr Harminder Singh Sidhu said the disposal of rice wheat residue was a huge problem and had been drawing the ire of the National Green Tribunal (NGT). Presently working as senior agricultural engineer at Borlaug Institute for South Asia (BISA), Ladhowal, Ludhiana, Dr Sidhu said owing to the fiscal distress, farmers resorted to stubble burning as an easy and cost-effective option. “Estimates indicate that over 80 per cent of the rice straw is burnt by the farmers, while 75 per cent of the wheat residue is collected for use as fodder. Still the remaining 25 per cent of the stubble goes up in smoke. Paddy alone generates 22 MT of residue in the state and we can guess the magnitude of the problem,” he pointed out. “As the NGT noted with concern, burning straw leads to pollution with serious implications for humans, animal, soil and environment, besides micro-flora and fauna. The farmers have to know that un-sustainability cannot be an option now and that we need to confront climate change. The choices are soil cover with residues and crop rotation,” he stressed.
On the reluctance of farmers in adopting proven CA machines, he said the farmers were deterred by conflicting messages and policies, inability to take risk for no incentives, buying a new set of machines which they perceive to be knowledge intensive, fear of the private sector (tractor/machinery manufacturers) and shortage of custom operators for CA machinery. Dr Sidhu said during his recent visit to Argentina he met a farmer who had not tilled his land since 1972 and another father-daughter duo who had not ploughed their land since 1992. There is no reason why their success could not be replicated in Punjab.Wishing to sidestep comments on policy matters, he said it was for the government to decide since Punjab could lead the way in stamping this recurring bane every year. During his 20 years experience, Dr Sidhu has focused on machinery related to conservation agriculture like strip till drill, no till drill, no till drill with double disc openers, Happy Seeder, straw management system (SMS) for combine harvester, laser land leveller etc.