Farmers lukewarm to bio-decomposers as stubble burning incidents rise

Govinder Singh, who belongs to Mangwal village in Sangrur district, has sown paddy in nine acres of the 10 he has. Waiting to harvest the paddy in the next few days, Govinder said on the phone despite being aware of the benefits of using bio-decomposers, he did not use them this year.

He said as of now, the agriculture department was contacting farmers to let them use their fields for experim­ent. Sometimes the department contacts farmers days after harvesting, which is not feasible “for us”, he said.

“We have been told pests attack fields where bio-decomposers are used. Also, even if farmers agree to use bio-decomposers, the agriculture department takes 25-30 days to study the field, which will further delay wheat sowing.”

Kulwant Singh from Chabba village in Amritsar has similar views.

He said bio-decomposing took up to three weeks as against the window of 10-15 days available to them between paddy harvesting and sowing the next crop.

What Govinder and Kulwant said is the predicament millions of farmers across the northern belt have faced this time with bio-decomposers.

Last year, according to officials and industry players, decomposers were used in 1.7-2 million acres, mostly in Punjab, Haryana, and Delhi, and this year, the plan was to scale it up significantly. However, despite that, incidents of paddy stubble burning increased, particularly in Punjab.

M M Kutty, chairman, Comm­ission for Air Quality Management, recently said Punjab had agreed to use the bio-decomposer in just 5,000 acres while the area under paddy in the state is close to 7.5 million acres.

“The scientific results we have received show if one applies a bio-decomposer and mixes it with soil immediately, and then moistures it within a week, it will give over 90 per cent results within 21 days. However, the Punjab government has shown little interest in using bio-decomposers,” Kutty said recently.

In Punjab, till October 24, around 38.74 per cent of the area in which paddy was sown had been harvested and 25.63 per cent of the harvested area was put on fire, according to the official data.

However, industry players and farmers said there were other reasons for the slower than targeted adoption.

These include an unusually short window between the paddy harvest and wheat sowing this year owing to the extended monsoon, poor awareness about the standard operating procedures, and, in some cases, competitive incentives from states for processes like making paddy straw bales. 

“Last year, we had sprinkled decomposers in around 420,000 acres while this year the target was to scale it up to 800,000 acres, but, it seems we might fall short of the target,” Dhruv Sawhney, chief operating officer and business head of nurture.farm, which has worked with the Indian Council of Agriculture Research to develop the latest version of decomposers, told Business Standard.

“When one uses the decomposer, one has to ensure that the paddy stubble is cut into small pieces because if the stubble is, say, 12-18 inches long, it will take a long time to decay. To cut straws into small pieces, farmers have to use a special straw management system attached to their combine harvesters, which puts an additional cost of Rs 500-600 per acre on the farmer just for harvesting. Unless this extra cost is reimbursed, the farmer will not use the machine, and blame the decomposer for not being efficient enough,” Sawhney said, advocating an incentive of Rs 1,000-1,500 per acre for farmers.

Another industry player said: “Earlier bio-decomposers used to take 60-90 days to decay the stubble. 

That has now been brought down to 20-22 days, and scientists are working at lowering this by another five-seven days. That can take care of most of the problems.”

Sandeepa Kanitkar, chairperson and managing director of Kan Biosys, said sometimes the law also needed to be enforced strictly to ensure that burning stubble was prohibited.

Kan Biosys has developed a product called “speed compost”, which is different from the PUSA bio-decomposer and is mixed with urea and spread on the rice stubble.

“We have tested this product in around 30,000 acres and are ready to scale it up even further,” Kanitkar said.

Akhilesh Jain, co-founder of Agrotech India, an agritech start-up, said: “According to farmers, spraying the bio-decomposer requires an additional effort and manpower. Also, bio-decomposers take 15-30 days to work. The decomposer, being a microbial solution, needs moisture in the field to start the enzymatic activity. All these force farmers to opt for burning.”