Stubble burning: Root cause, impacts and its management in Indian scenario

Abstract

The practice of purposefully setting fire to the residue that remained after harvest of rice and wheat crop is increasing periodically. Stubble burning has become one of the challenging issues in India in recent times. Government has been consistently instructing farmers not to burn the crop residues, instead asking them for in-situ management. Farmers are citing various complications in stubble management which pulling them to setting up fire to the stubble. Rice straw burning generates life threatening greenhouse gases which causes air pollution injury. Particulate matter (PM2.5) levels in the capital state of India (New Delhi) have been exceeded by 14 times than threshold level because of episodic agricultural fires in the neighbouring states namely Punjab, Haryana. A very limited study has been done so far on this complete issue despite of its importance. The present review tried to expose root cause, impacts on ecosystem and management strategies of stubble burning especially in India. There are plethora of possibilities in managing residue in sustainable ways including in-situ residue management, mushroom production, livestock feed, composting, biochar preparation, bio-thermal power plants and paper industries. Mechanical and effective method of in-situ management has been come into existence in the form of happy seeder. Depending on the land holding farmers can follow any of the said methods and manage their residue in sustainable way by overcoming the constraints thereby reducing the impacts on ecosystem.