Amritsar/Mansa: Darshan Singh, a 70-year-old farmer, proudly shows off his certificates and trophies from the Punjab government for not having burnt any farm stubble for the past decade.
He says he is happy with the respect he receives but, despite the awards and accolades, one thing is missing—money.
“My fellow villagers respect me, and I am happy the government has also given me awards, but that doesn’t fulfill my needs. I should be awarded a bonus,” he told ThePrint.
“A car runs on four wheels. But without government support, our stubble management is happening only on two wheels. The entire onus is on farmers,” he said.
Over the years, farmers in Punjab and Haryana have burnt paddy stubble to clear their fields, despite a ban by the National Green Tribunal (NGT) since 2015.
However, with growing criticism of the practice, which leads to air pollution in the region and the neighbouring Delhi NCR, many farmers have been forced to use other stubble management methods, which are more expensive and time-intensive.
Even though the Supreme Court in 2019 had ordered a compensation of Rs 100 per quintal of paddy for non-basmati-growing farmers who don’t burn their paddy stubble, the Punjab government provides no compensation to farmers.
Farmers say they spend up to Rs 4,000 per acre using both in-situ (inside the farm) and ex-situ (outside the farm) stubble management methods, discouraging them from disposing of stubble using environment-friendly methods.
The costs include buying or renting machinery as well as diesel and labour expenses for removing piles of straw from their fields.
Many farmers in Punjab have adopted the new stubble management methods because of a government crackdown on stubble burning, which stokes air pollution in the region at the onset of winter each year.
As the Supreme Court pulled up the Punjab and Haryana governments over their failure to take action against farmers who burnt their crop waste, Punjab took strict measures such as imposing fines and filing police complaints against farmers burning their paddy stubble.
Apart from the fines, the government has also significantly ramped up red entries in revenue records of farmers who set their paddy residue on fire, making it tougher for them to apply for loans and subsidies.
The Punjab Pollution Control Board told the NGT this year that farm fires in Punjab had dropped 75 percent.
Yet, the smell of fire still envelopes Amritsar on autumn evenings and a thick layer of smog covers Punjab’s state highways, dotted with burnt fields on either side. Stubble is burnt at dusk, largely to avoid police action.
ThePrint reached Punjab Pollution Control Board, which asked that all queries regarding stubble management be directed to Jagdish Singh, Director of Punjab’s agriculture department. ThePrint reached Singh via WhatsApp messages. This report will be updated if and when a response is received.
Also Read: How Punjab farmers sacrificed high income for a big cause—they gave up Pusa-44 this year
Bundling of stubble
One of the popular alternative methods of managing crop waste involves collecting the stubble into bales and getting rid of it outside.
For the past three years, Balger Singh, a 49-year-old farmer in Amritsar’s Verka village, has been bundling up the paddy straw on his field before getting rid of them.
“I first use a machine to cut the straw into smaller sections across the field. Then I rent a baler machine from a local zamindar who takes at least Rs 3,000 per acre,” he told ThePrint.
A baler is an agriculture machine connected to a tractor that collects stubble from a field to turn it into bales.
Although this is a popular method of discarding stubble adopted by farmers near Amritsar’s Majitha bypass, farmers complain it is more expensive.
For one, small and medium farmers have to fork out at least Rs 3,000 an acre to rent balers. Even though they are available from the government at a 65 percent subsidy, farmers find it tough to avail of the subsidy because the government acquired only 1,000 balers last year.
And then there’s the added cost of getting rid of the bales.
Balger Singh says he can barely afford the added cost of disposing of the paddy stubble after struggling to sell his paddy crop in the mandi this year.
Basmati rice—which fetched him Rs 3,700 a quintal in 2023—sold for less than Rs 2,600 a quintal this year.
“This is my biggest headache this year,” said Singh, pointing to a bundle of straw near the cot where he sat under a peepal tree.
In and around his village, walls of bundled-up straw can be spotted across fields.
Balger Singh says he pays farm labour Rs 8 per bundle to get rid of the straw bundles from his field. About 100-120 bundles of straw are collected per acre of land, bringing labour costs up to Rs 960 per acre.
The other problem is, there’s no custom hiring centre (CHC) to rent agricultural equipment close to him. Moreover, queues at the CHCs are long and rents are high during peak season.
This forces farmers to store the straw for the interim on vacant or waste land, where it is at risk of attracting rats.
“Rats smell and come for the grains of paddy still in the straw; they later enter our fields and create a menace,” said Bahadur Singh, another farmer.
And then there is the additional cost of moving the straw to factories.
“From Amritsar, farmers have to take bundles all the way to Pathankot, because there are no factories here. The least they can do is open a factory in every district,” Bahadur Singh said.
This method of ex-situ, or outside farm, stubble management is popular around the villages of Amritsar because farmers say the Gujjars, or shepherds, take the bundles to use as cattle fodder.
Sometimes, the shepherds cover half the cost of extracting the bundles from the field, other times they take it from them for free.
“But it is not easy to find Gujjars. Also, how much stubble could they possibly use?” said Bahadur Singh.
The costs add up and he ends up spending up to Rs 2 lakh on removing straw from his field and gets no incentive from the government.
Cutting, spreading and SMS
The other crop waste management system that farmers adopt is the simple method of cutting and spreading the stubble in the soil.
This method isn’t cheap either as farmers have to use machines like super seeders or straw management systems (SMS) from the government to plough the crop waste back.
An SMS is a device mounted on the rear end of a tractor that cuts and spreads the stubble evenly across a field.
Sahib Singh Sethi—a small farmer in Amritsar’s Mirakot who owns four acres of land and has leased 10 acres—said he uses a relatively cheaper but more time-consuming method because he can’t afford an SMS.
A cutter and spreader should ideally cost Rs 30,000, according to a cost of equipment list provided by the Centre to the Rajya Sabha in 2021.
First, he cuts the straw into finer pieces with a cutter. This takes three or four tractor rounds per acre, he claimed.
Sethi then waters the soil and uses a disc plough and a traditional plougher on the field three or four times before using a super seeder to bury the straw deep in the soil.
“I thought burning the field was damaging the fertility of the soil. This system increases the strength of my zameen, so I do it,” he said.
Even though this method takes up a lot of time, Sethi doesn’t want to buy the mandatory government-subsidised SMS simply because of the cost. “It isn’t easy to obtain a subsidy,” he said.
Sethi estimates his primary expense is the cost of diesel, which is about Rs 3,000 per acre.
But Darshan Singh in village Dulowal of Mansa is happy with the Straw Management System. He has been managing the paddy stubble on his farm for 10 years and finds it the most cost-effective method. He used to plough his field in the same manner as Sethi till 2020-2021 when he switched to Punjab Agricultural University’s SMS system, which cost him Rs 80,000. The subsidised rate of the SMS is Rs 54,000.
Darshan Singh has been using this machine for three years now. He first cuts the straw evenly across the field, waters it, then ploughs it with the SMS machine again, and finally uses a super seeder to further mix the stubble in the ground.
He also uses a Pusa bio-decomposer for the decomposition of the stubble.
Punjab Agricultural University claims this reduces the cost of stubble management to Rs 650 per acre, but he maintains his cost of diesel and machinery maintenance sets him back Rs 5,000 per acre.
Growing demand for compensation
Farmers are frustrated that the government doesn’t help them with managing stubble, but is quick to file FIRs and impose fines.
The Supreme Court in 2019 directed the government to pay small and marginal farmers who didn’t burn their farm stubble Rs 100 per quintal of non-basmati paddy.
Then environment minister Prakash Javadekar informed the Rajya Sabha in 2019 that the Punjab government had spent Rs 22.47 crore in incentivising small and marginal farmers for in-situ stubble disposal.
In 2022, the Centre rejected a joint proposal of the Delhi and Punjab governments to give a Rs 2,500 compensation per acre to farmers using in-situ methods for disposing of stubble.
With swift FIRs and red notices served to farmers who still burn their paddy stubble, bitterness and defiance have settled in.
“Even a Rs 30,000 fine, which I won’t pay and will take the government to court over, will be less expensive than the cost of bundling up the paddy,” a farmer, who set fire to his paddy stubble, told ThePrint on condition of anonymity.
Farmers resort to widespread burning of paddy residue because they have a short window of less than 25 days to prepare their fields between the paddy harvest and sowing of wheat.
Balger Singh and other farmers in Verka village who have ditched traditional stubble burning want compensation from the government but aren’t hopeful.
“Tell you what, we will not burn parali (stubble). Just ask the government to visit our villages every year, cut the stubble, sow wheat in farmlands, and leave. In fact, we are willing to pay the government for it,” said Balger Singh.
Farmers claim smoke from stubble burning causes only small percentage of Delhi’s pollution woes, but they’re still targeted the most.
A Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) report released last month found that stubble burning accounted for less than 5 percent of Delhi’s air pollution.
It said vehicular emissions were the biggest contributor to the city’s pollution during the winter season.
“About 50-60 percent of pollution is caused by vehicles in Delhi. Does the government ever ask car owners why they’re driving cars?” Heerapal Singh, a resident of Mirakot village in Amritsar, said.
“See the end result of stubble is only one: burning. If a farmer burns it, it causes pollution; if a factory burns it, then all is well. It doesn’t add up for me,” Gurinder Singh, another farmer added.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)
Why this stubble burning is only in punjab and haryana and not in another state?
This article suggests that it has reduce… I look outside my window and know this is a darn lie..
Instead of troubling the farmers of surroundings States in Agriculture which is back bone to GDP and poor AQI air pollution in New Delhi , Why the Central Government and Supreme Court is not working for second capital for the India ?