Farmers Movement Archive

Haryana: Cost to access, last-mile gaps hit steps to stop stubble fires

KAITHAL/KARNAL/PANIPAT: In Badauli village of Panipat, Rajesh Singh is waiting for his three-acre paddy field — inundated thanks to a long monsoon — to dry up so that he can start preparing for sowing, which means burning the crop residue. “We set the field on fire every year to ensure our land is ready for sowing wheat,” said the 38-year-old farmer. “The window between the harvesting of paddy and the sowing of wheat is small,” he added, indicating he will do the same this year as soon as the fields get dry. Each year, farm fires that accompany harvesting in Haryana and Punjab choke the region and elevate Delhi-NCR’s pollution to alarming levels in October-November. Over the past few years, the Haryana government has introduced several measures to check this. These include Happy Seeders, reversive plough, Super Seeders, rotavator and mulchers, all implements that have been introduced to lessen the incidence of farm fires. Custom hiring centres have been set up in ‘hotspot’ villages as well to provide machinery and equipment to small farmers for harvesting and managing crop residue. The centres also mark areas in panchayats to store stubble. Yet, many farmers are once again preparing to set stubble on fire to ready their fields for sowing. At farms in Karnal, Kaithal and Panipat that TOI visited, the common refrain is that it remains the most convenient way of getting rid of stubble. There is reticence about the alternatives, especially among small farmers, because they are either “too costly” or “too cumbersome”. This has created a last-mile gap between the tech interventions and many peasants. Karnal and Kaithal were among districts that reported most farm fires last year. According to government data, Haryana has 6,150 paddy growing villages and 16.17 lakh farmers. Since 2018, the state has provided 15,000 Happy Seeders on 50% subsidy to individual farmers and on 80% to cooperatives. Happy Seeders are tractor-operated machines for in-situ management of straw. The equipment chops and evenly spreads the stubble and adds its organic value to the soil. After this, farmers can directly sow wheat seeds in the field. Happy Seeders have had some success, especially in Karnal, but remain out of reach for many farmers still. Asked if he had used a Happy Seeder, Rajesh Singh replied, “I applied once in 2018, but it is a tedious process. I was told by government officials to form a cooperative and apply. When the application was rejected for the second time, I never bothered to follow up again.” Medium and small farmers see the cost of Happy Seeders, even at subsidised rates, as prohibitive. A Happy Seeder costs Rs 1.5 lakh while a Super Seeder is for Rs 3 lakh. Most of the time, the equipment that is available on rent is captured by a handful of farmers, they say. Baldev Singh (37), a paddy and wheat farmer at Kaithal’s Chousala village, told TOI he has never used a Super Seeder. “Small farmers like me can’t afford it or take a big loan. Besides, to use such a machine, one should own a tractor. That is an additional cost. The Super or Happy Seeder is used just once a year, so I don’t see any point investing in it,” he said. In Karnal’s Bassi village, Parveen, a 36-year-old farmer who has 3.5 acres, said bringing in a machine involved more costs. “After using such machines, the farmland becomes hard and manual farming for the next session is not possible. So, farmers end up purchasing more equipment like reversive plough, which comes with a price tag of Rs 70,000, rotavator that costs Rs 1.5 lakh and mulcher, which is for Rs 2.5 lakh,” he said. Many of the farms in the three districts had millet stubble dumped on the fields. “We aren’t happy with the practice of farm fires either,” said Preetpal Singh (53), a farmer at Babail village in Panipat. “I had a harvest of bajra (millet) on my land and the stubble is still lying around because I don’t know where to store it. It is wet due to the rain. Once it dries up, I’ll decide what to do with it.” Farmers in Haryana can broadly be divided into three categories – large farmers who own land between 20 and 25 acres, medium farmers with 3-15 acres and small farmers who have less than 2.5 acres. The state has 80% small farmers who cannot afford high-tech machinery and find it easier to simply burn the stubble, often in a staggered manner, to avoid attention from the authorities. Farm fires will reduce, say agri officialsGovernment officials are optimistic, though, that stubble burning this season will decrease from last year. One reason, says ACS (agriculture) Sumita Misra, is that the total area under paddy has been reduced from 38 lakh acres to 34.1 lakh acres. “We have several methods that the farmers can adopt to avoid stubble burning, such as decomposers that can be sprayed on the stubble, which dissolves after a month. We are also sensitising farmers about the harmful effects of stubble burning,” said Aditya Pratap Dabas, deputy director (agriculture), Karnal. Haryana has been using a bio-decomposer that usually takes 30 days to take effect. Delhi’s Pusa bio-decomposer, which will be introduced on October 5, takes about 20 days for stubble to decompose after spraying. On farmers’ claims about applications being rejected, Karam Chand, deputy director (agriculture), Kaithal, said, “A few applications were rejected because the farmers had already got Happy Seeders three years ago and the life of a machine is 10 years.” Chand expressed confidence that this season will see fewer farm fires. However, farmer unions pointed out that technological reforms on a mass scale are yet to reach needy farmers. “Ensuring that innovative technology reaches farmers and taking them in confidence is the key. About 80% of the farmers in Haryana have less than 2 acres of land. They can’t afford a machine that costs lakhs of rupees. Stubble occupies space, which is just not available with small farmers,” said All India Kisan Sabha leader Inderjeet Singh. Meenakshi Sangwan, a scientist at Krishi Vigyan Kendra, said, “We have been working very closely with farmers to manage crop residue and bridge the gap between them and technological know-how. Machines are costly and used once a year, which demotivates them, but several farmers are also opting for the equipment.”

The Times of India

2021-10-03

Gurgaon