WHEAT HARVESTING and STRAW BURNING<\/p>\n\n\n
One indirect and positive fallout of the lockdown in the country has been\nthat the environment has been cleaned up, the skies have become blue and the\nquality of air in terms of purity is now comparable to any other place in the\nworld. <\/p>\n\n\n
It is also the time of the harvesting season of a wheat crop and as the\nharvesting has been delayed on account of the lockdown a sense of the urgency\nhas crept in to expedite harvesting as the field has to be prepared for the new\ncrop before paddy sowing would start. So, there would be a familiar sight of crop\nresidue being set to a flame to clear the field ( particularly in Punjab,\nHaryana, and parts of UP)and owing to windy conditions there are reports of a\nwidespread fire as a fallout that extends to the neighboring fields and much\nbeyond, engulfing the standing crop in the neighboring field.<\/p>\n\n\n
In the previous harvesting season of paddy, a gargantuan an effort was\ninitiated by all the stakeholders to see to it that the straw left in the field\nis not set fire upon but is disposed-off in a scientific manner. To ensure this\ngovernment had encouraged the purchase of various kind of harvesting equipment\nto the farmer bodies through various subsidy based schemes, predominant being\nthe combine harvester and reaper and it needs to be ensured that those\nequipment are put into operation so that fire is not resorted to. <\/p>\n\n\n
For the farmers who are dependent on combine harvesters to reach their\nfields from Punjab and Haryana, it would be a tough challenge as the combine\nharvesters cannot travel such distances in such a small time.<\/p>\n\n\n
The farmers this season are placed in a piquant situation on an account of\na serious and critical shortage of labor also, so the temptation to set the\nfire to the crop residue and prepare the crop would be more so tempting.\n The challenge is immense as the window for harvesting is short on account\nof the lockdown and on an account of the labor shortage, the problem is going\nto be compounded.<\/p>\n\n\n
Social Distancing in agricultural operations<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n Coupled with it is the challenge of social distancing. While the combine\noperator is socially distant, there are three to four persons who work at the\nback end of the machine to complete the exercise and if social distancing is to\nbe maintained, then it would be difficult to complete the operation in the\navailable time.<\/p>\n\n\n Why should the straw not be burnt for a change<\/strong>?<\/p>\n\n\n It needs to be ingrained in the mind of the farmers that on account of this\nshutdown a natural process of healing of the agricultural land has also taken\nplace and it has the potential to provide benefits to the crop in the ensuing\nseason. It is for the first time in quite a distant memory that the soil has\nbeen left to recoup itself. If the crop residue is burnt, the vital nutrients\nthat the soil has been able to recoup could be lost.<\/p>\n\n\n The farming community has another existentialist dilemma to find a solution\nto. The dilemma is of assimilating and collecting the fodder. Even after the\nharvesting is done by the machine, the fodder that has been prepared needs to\nbe carried to its place of storage. For each farmer, 1-2 labor is required to\nundertake this exercise. In the current season, the critical shortage of labor\nwould mean that the fodder that has been harvested may not be collected in the\nsame proportion. <\/p>\n\n\n If this happens an additional income that farmer derives from the residue\nby selling the wheat straw to various factory owners where it is used as a raw\nmaterial for firing the boilers would not accrue. This straw is predominantly\nused by various MSME (Medium and Small Scale Industries), for whom it is a cheaper\nsource of energy than electricity and there is a possibility that these MSMEs\ncould be deprived of this cheap source of energy. <\/p>\n\n\n The way out would be to prepare an inventory of the harvesters at the block\nlevel and organize its utilization in a structured manner so that all the\nfarmers are able to harvest their crops. When the government has given the\nrelaxation for agriculture, it also needs to tie this loose end from the back\nso that the small farmers do not lose out which happens in the normal course as\nthe window of harvesting is curtailed.<\/p>\n\n\n Nalin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" WHEAT HARVESTING and STRAW BURNING One indirect and positive fallout of the lockdown in the country has been that the environment has been cleaned up, the skies have become blue and the quality of air in terms of purity is now comparable to any other place in the world. It is also the time of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":782,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[24,15,18,26,27,28],"class_list":["post-150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-agriculture","tag-corona-impact-on-agriculture","tag-covid-19","tag-harvest","tag-lockdown","tag-wheat-season"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.agnext.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.agnext.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.agnext.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.agnext.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.agnext.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.agnext.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.agnext.com\/test\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.agnext.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.agnext.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.agnext.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}