-IANS
New Delhi: If the farmers of Punjab and Haryana
were to adopt smart techniques and use appropriate machinery, say
experts, they won’t hog the headlines every winter for the wrong reasons
— causing smog in the national capital because of stubble-burning. The
Borlaug Institute of South Asia (BISA), a non-profit set up in 2011 to
harness the latest technology in agriculture to improve farm
productivity, has claimed to have reduced the volume of agricultural
residue burning in some villages it has selected for smart farming in
the last few years. One of the successful examples is a cluster of
villages in Haryana’s Karnal district, where stubble-burning has shrunk
to just 20 per cent of the cultivated land, local farmers said. Vikas
Chaudhary, who cultivates 35 acres of land in Taraori, said this year
paddy straw was burnt on just 400-500 acres of the total 2,400 acres of
agricultural land in the village. He said BISA has suggested an
alternative in the form of a new machine — a Happy Seeder — which allows
effective seeding without removing the straw residue. Conceived by the
Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), Happy Seeder is like any Zero Till
Machine with the additional feature of a chopper that clears the loose
straw which creates problems in sowing. BISA is a collaborative effort
involving the El Batan, Mexico-based International Maize and Wheat
Improvement Centre (CIMMYT) and the Indian Council for Agricultural
Research (ICAR). Earlier, farmers would cut the entire crop while
reaping under conventional methods, leaving very little straw on the
field.
were to adopt smart techniques and use appropriate machinery, say
experts, they won’t hog the headlines every winter for the wrong reasons
— causing smog in the national capital because of stubble-burning. The
Borlaug Institute of South Asia (BISA), a non-profit set up in 2011 to
harness the latest technology in agriculture to improve farm
productivity, has claimed to have reduced the volume of agricultural
residue burning in some villages it has selected for smart farming in
the last few years. One of the successful examples is a cluster of
villages in Haryana’s Karnal district, where stubble-burning has shrunk
to just 20 per cent of the cultivated land, local farmers said. Vikas
Chaudhary, who cultivates 35 acres of land in Taraori, said this year
paddy straw was burnt on just 400-500 acres of the total 2,400 acres of
agricultural land in the village. He said BISA has suggested an
alternative in the form of a new machine — a Happy Seeder — which allows
effective seeding without removing the straw residue. Conceived by the
Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), Happy Seeder is like any Zero Till
Machine with the additional feature of a chopper that clears the loose
straw which creates problems in sowing. BISA is a collaborative effort
involving the El Batan, Mexico-based International Maize and Wheat
Improvement Centre (CIMMYT) and the Indian Council for Agricultural
Research (ICAR). Earlier, farmers would cut the entire crop while
reaping under conventional methods, leaving very little straw on the
field.
However, the advent of combine harvesters — machines that
combine the three separate operations of reaping, threshing and
winnowing into one process — the magnitude of straw burning has
increased since it cuts just the spike of paddy plants, leaving stems
intact. In the past few years, farmers have become accustomed to using
Rotavators — soil tilling machine — before sowing seeds. Since
Rotavators cannot work unless the agriculture residue is cleared,
farmers have no option but to set the stubble on fire as manual removal
is not a viable option owing to the huge cost involved and small time
window to cultivate winter crops such as wheat, said M.L. Jat, Principal
Scientist with the CIMMYT. “In our smart farming villages, we have
introduced Happy Seeder machines which facilitate seed sowing though
there is stubble in the field. It retains soil fertility as well,” Jat
said. “And the results are positive. Not just the output has remained
unaffected, but input cost has gone down as well. We have found that
stubble provided nutrients to soil, minimising the requirement of
fertiliser.”
combine the three separate operations of reaping, threshing and
winnowing into one process — the magnitude of straw burning has
increased since it cuts just the spike of paddy plants, leaving stems
intact. In the past few years, farmers have become accustomed to using
Rotavators — soil tilling machine — before sowing seeds. Since
Rotavators cannot work unless the agriculture residue is cleared,
farmers have no option but to set the stubble on fire as manual removal
is not a viable option owing to the huge cost involved and small time
window to cultivate winter crops such as wheat, said M.L. Jat, Principal
Scientist with the CIMMYT. “In our smart farming villages, we have
introduced Happy Seeder machines which facilitate seed sowing though
there is stubble in the field. It retains soil fertility as well,” Jat
said. “And the results are positive. Not just the output has remained
unaffected, but input cost has gone down as well. We have found that
stubble provided nutrients to soil, minimising the requirement of
fertiliser.”
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