As the wheat harvesting season approaches, the instances of stubble burning spike. It is imperative to discuss stubble burning this summer season, as it goes largely unnoticed as compared to winter.
States around Delhi receive more attention from the press for burning crop residue, but it is no longer a localised phenomenon.
For instance, Madhya Pradesh has become the leading state in burning crop residue, with significantly more incidents than Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh combined.
Vidisha district alone had 2,916 incidents of stubble burning between April 1 and 20. Farmers are being conveniently blamed for burning the crop residues when, in most cases, they have little choice.
Recently, the state government decided not to provide governmental benefits to the farmers burning stubble.
However, the issue stems from past and present policies and needs to be resolved through policy interventions. The Green Revolution was hailed for its success in eradicating hunger across the country. However, it also has inevitable negative fallouts, which have begun to appear prominently of late.
Some of the impacts of the Green Revolution are monoculture, mechanisation and multiple crops per year. Although this has increased food security, production efficiency and incomes quantitatively, it has also created issues revolving around water-table, soil fertility and air quality.
Burning of agricultural residues constitutes about a quarter of global biomass burning, which includes forest and grassland fires. Moreover, the overall emission from stubble burning has increased over a period of time. Mechanised harvesting leads to crop residues in the form of large-sized straws in the fields post-harvest.
Since the farmers have to prepare their fields for the next crop soon, they usually do not find it feasible to wait for the residue to degrade. Moreover, the lack of alternative use of such residue makes it appear to be a waste.
To get rid of such a liability, the only feasible option that remains is to burn it. Burning crop residue reduces the nutritional content of the soil and affects its fertility. This incrementally increases the requirements and cost of fertilisers. This vicious cycle continues and the farmers find it hard to come out of it.
Certain crops, such as rice and wheat, leave more residue than others. Regions with monoculture in these crops are usually the ones with the highest stubble burning.
Geographically, northwestern states are not naturally suited to grow rice and other water-intensive crops, but thanks to technology, they can utilise groundwater and grow these crops now. However, experts believe crop diversification is seriously needed to address the environmental hazards caused by monoculture.
Policy intervention in the form of a lucrative minimum support price (MSP) could be one of the tools to drive this transition.
Horticulture crops such as fruits and vegetables leave minimal residue and are better suited for the nutritional requirements of the country, which are mainly centered around vitamins, minerals and proteins.
Therefore, the states should incentivise farmers to grow crops that suit the geography and help with nutritional security. Since farmers in many states are progressing towards monocultural patterns, this problem could scale up in the future.
Due to mechanisation, the role of cattle in agriculture has reduced significantly. Hence, the need to preserve crop residue for forage is also vanishing. Except for a few paddy varieties, crop residues are great fodder for the cattle.
Southern states have better utilised crop residues by feeding the livestock or making compost from them. Hence, crop diversification along with integrated farming could help minimise waste & input costs and maximise productivity. Integrated farming could help minimise the ecological footprints and optimise resource utilisation, which would give a fillip to the circular economy as well.
The impactful solution to the stubble burning issue also lies in a market-based mechanism where the crop residue is utilised as a raw material for some other purposes and is no longer treated as waste. The idea is that when the farmers would get incentivised to sell their crop residues, they would not burn them.
Crop residues can be used to make compost, fodder and paper and generate energy. It has been opined that if the government could help collect the crop residue from the farmers like a municipality collects waste from the households, then it could resolve the issue of stubble burning considerably.
However, instead of collecting the crop residue, the government could incentivise industries requiring crop residue to expand in the regions with stubble burning.
This would establish a value chain with linkages between farmlands and factories. The existing value chains have been reported to lack financial viability. However, scientific research indicates there is great potential in generating energy from crop residue. It has been envisioned that the second generation of ethanol plants could convert crop residues into energy. Until then, the government could consider making biomass-based energy a distinct part of the Renewable Purchase Obligation (RPO) trajectory just like wind and hydro-energy, since the RPO is dominated by cheaper sources of energy such as solar.
Since the issue of stubble burning is spreading across the states, it is required to act in time to prevent fallouts. Agricultural development must be centered around farmers’ incomes, nutritional security and environmental sustainability. The model of cultivating monoculture crops with heavy mechanisation and chemicals is not sustainable in the long run. States should be nudged to adopt models based on integrated farming and circularity.
Value addition to the by-products of agriculture can reduce waste and pollution, along with creating additional sources of income for the farmers. We need policy interventions to nudge the stakeholders to act in this direction.
Dr. Saumya Singh is an Assistant Professor in Ecosystem & Environment area at Indian Institute of Forest Management Bhopal, India.
Akash Bajpai is a postgraduate student at Indian Institute of Forest Management in Bhopal.
Views expressed are authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth.