Burning paddy stubble has become a big issue for air pollution in Delhi and surrounding areas.
Every year during October and November, farmers in Punjab and Haryana are blamed for polluting the Delhi air by burning stubble.The state governments have imposed a penalty of Rs 2,500 per acre to dissuade farmers from burning stubble. But this has not deterred the farmers in both Punjab and Haryana.
But, let’s look into why these farmers opt to burn the stubble instead of managing it scientifically?
They only have a window of about a month between harvesting rice and planting wheat.
Earlier, farmers used to manually cut the rice. With this method, the rice stalk would be cut very close to the ground. But now, they use a machine called the combined harvester. It leaves a foot-and-a-half-long paddy stalks in field, which the farmers burn.
To avoid burning, machines like super-straw management system (S-SMS) can be attached to the combined harvester. As the combined harvester collects the paddy, the Super SMS cuts the straw and spreads it evenly around the field.
But, there is a catch here. The catch being if the super SMS is used along with the combined harvester, the farmer has to use another machine called Happy Seeder. The Happy Seeder is a tractor-mounted machine that basically cuts and lifts the remaining stubble and drills the wheat seeds into the soil. It then deposits the straw over the sown area as a mulch cover.
A farmer needs to spend around Rs 5,000 to Rs 6,000 per acre if he uses Super-SMS and Happy seeder machines. This is much more expensive than burning his field and paying Rs 2,500 per acre as penalty to the government. Punjab has only 7,500 Super-SMS fitted harvesters. These can only cover about 30 per cent of the total 2.8 million hectare of area under paddy cultivation in Punjab. In 2017, 50 per cent subsidy was announced for farmers wanting to buy Happy seeders. But the same year, the cost of a Happy seeder increased from Rs 90,000 to Rs 1,70,000.
The super-sms and happy seeder combination can only be used if the farmer grows wheat in the Rabi season. The farmer cannot grow any other crop using this combination.

Down to Earth is Science and Environment fortnightly published by the Society for Environmental Communication, New Delhi. We publish news and analysis on issues that deal with sustainable development, which we scan through the eyes of science and environment.

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