Farm fire incidents in Punjab: At 2,895, Sunday spike steepest

Sukhmeet Bhasin

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, November 1

The farm fire incidents surged to 14,920 as the state witnessed the highest single-day spike with 2,895 cases reported on Sunday alone, followed by 1,796 today.

The central and state governments have implemented several policy measures ranging from subsidising crop residue management (CRM) machines to providing cash incentives and banning crop residue burning. But, stubble burning still persists.

LS Kurinji and Srish Parkash of Council on Energy, Environment and Water, New Delhi, did a study on why stubble continues to be burnt in Punjab and observed that paddy continues to dominate Punjab’s kharif crop mix despite years of efforts to diversify. The area under paddy in Punjab during the kharif season in 2021 is 30.66 lakh hectare, only 2.6 per cent lower than 31.49 lakh hectare in 2020.

Area under the age-old late-maturing PUSA 44 variety, which has a high straw load of paddy, has declined considerably. However, it is still a dominant variety in districts where burning is frequent.

Punjab has seen a dramatic increase in the deployment of in-situ crop residue management. By 2020, Punjab had established 19,834 custom hiring centres and deployed 76,626 CRM machines. Sangrur has the maximum number of happy and super seeders, followed by Muktsar, Bathinda, and Mansa. If deployed at full capacity, the existing stock of happy seeders and super seeders can manage up to 17 lakh hectares, which correspond to 66 per cent of area sown under non-basmati variety, in 2021. However, their adoption is limited and utilisation remains inefficient.

The rental or custom hiring model of machines is picking pace but logistical challenges and behavioural issues are keeping it from reaching its full potential.