Crop-stubble fires: Punjab to spread word via social media

BATHINDA: The Punjab agriculture department has formulated a comprehensive action plan to control crop-stubble fires, including the circulation on social media of video clips featuring doctors talking about the ill-effects of the ensuing smoke, and a mobile phone app.

The state government also plans to set up 28 farm machinery banks in all the districts, providing subsidies on machinery to manage paddy straw, as well as free 'Happy Seeders' to small and marginal farmers in a cluster in Patiala as an experiment. The machine allows sowing of wheat in fields that still have rice stubble. The department had organised 2,540 awareness camps till mid-September to discourage farmers from burning stubble.

According to Punjab agriculture director J S Bains and joint director Manmohan Kalia, the nodal officer to check stubble burning, Rs 15 crore had been released to provide farmers with subsidised agriculture equipment. Last year, the amount was Rs 20.23 crore.

The agriculture department has decided to make a mobile phone app with the assistance of Punjab Remote Sensing Centre, Ludhiana, to encourage the use of all equipment to their full capacity, and allow easy access to farmers not owning machinery, they said.

The primary agriculture co-operative societies (PACS) would provide crop-residue management machinery free of cost to 20% of small and marginal farmers. Also, the state government has set up a 'Green Challenge Fund' of Rs 5 crore for promoting alternative uses of paddy straw. This award will be given to anyone who can come up with an economically viable solution for decomposing biomass.

Farm machinery banks for residue management are being set up in the state, for which Rs 1.90 crore has been released. There are 28 such banks.