By Ridhima Gupta and E. Somanathan
It is believed that much of the pollution in Delhi in November every year originates in the neighbouring states of Punjab and Haryana where farmers burn their fields to dispose of crop residue. This column discusses a simple, practical and cost-effective solution to deal with the problem.
Over the past week, Delhi has remained under the grip of dense smog. This years pollution levels are the highest ever measured in two decades.
Newspapers reported that much of this pollution originated in the neighbouring states of Punjab and Haryana where farmers burn their fields to dispose crop residue. But they were short on providing solutions to deal with the problem of burning of agricultural fields.
There is, in fact, a simple, practical, and cost-effective way to eliminate most of the smog that envelopes Delhi and the entire northwest of the country every November. At this time of the year, farmers in the states of Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh harvest the rice crop by combine harvesters. This machine leaves rice straw strewn all over the fields. Because farmers do not value the rice straw as animal-feed or for non-feed use, they dispose of the residue by burning it. The straws clogs the seeder machines that plant the next crop, which is wheat, so farmers need to dispose of the residue before attempting to plant wheat.
A happy solution
But, a simple solution exists. A machine called the Happy Seeder has been developed in the last few years that can plant the wheat seed without getting jammed by the rice straw. The Happy Seeder is a tractor-mounted machine that cuts and lifts rice straw, sows wheat into the bare soil, and deposits the straw over the sown area as mulch.
Does the machine affect yields? Is it cost-effective? Will farmers adopt it? To answer these questions, one of us (Gupta) surveyed 92 farmers in the year 2010 that used Happy Seeder in some plots, while using the conventional machine on their other plots. This allows a comparison between the cost, yield and profit from using Happy Seeder versus the old method for the same farmers. To see if the Happy Seeder is productive, we note that the average yield of wheat on plots that used the machine was 43.3 quintals/hectare (ha) while the average yield on conventional plots was almost the same at 43.8 quintals/hectare.
Is the Happy Seeder cost-effective? The average cost of preparing the field for sowing wheat using the Happy Seeder was Rs. 6,225/ha while it was Rs. 7,288/ha using conventional methods. Thus, farmers save, on average, Rs. 1,000/ha by cultivating plots with Happy Seeder. This is not surprising as Happy Seeder is a zero tillage technology.
Per-hectare profit, on average, from wheat when the Happy Seeder is used is Rs. 40,548, about Rs. 500/ha more than the Rs. 40,024/ha profit on conventionally tilled plots. Thus, the Happy Seeder is profitable, but the gain in average profit is small and so while some farmers will see a small profit gain, others may see a small profit decline when they switch to using the new machine. Some farmers will probably adopt the Happy Seeder on their own, but without major government support we cannot expect use of the machine to spread rapidly.
What can the government do?
Banning burning, or appeals by government officials, has been mostly ineffective in districts of Punjab and Haryana. It has failed mainly because farmers dont know of any cost-effective alternative, and they are politically too powerful to be forced to do something that would reduce their incomes from farming.
Our research shows that Happy Seeder is a viable alternative to conventional tillage. What is needed for its rapid adoption is a major government push to publicise and popularise the Happy Seeder. Currently the Happy Seeder machine costs about Rs. 1.3 lakh with a subsidy of 33%. We propose that the subsidy on Happy Seeder machine be raised to 50% because it would then be significantly more profitable than the conventional practice. The active rental markets for agricultural machines in northwest India imply that take-up can be very quick once a significant number of farmers own the machines. But we need to act now otherwise we will be coughing and choking every November.
This article appeared on Huffington Post on 11 November 2016: http://www.huffingtonpost.in/e-somanathan/with-a-little-push-technology-could-help-clear-the-air-in-delhi/?utm_hp_ref=in- . A version of the article was posted on Ideas for India in December 2012, and is being republished due to its relevance.
Ridhima Gupta is an Assistant Professor in the department of Economic Sciences at IISER Bhopal.
E. Somanathan is a Professor in the Planning Unit at the Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi.
The article was originally published in Ideas For India.