Farm machine makers worry over govt plan to use straw as power fuel

Punjab and Haryana have 250-odd mechanised balers, which convert paddy straw into biomass, ready for use by power plants

A few large farm equipment makers claim using paddy stubble as fuel in state-owned power plants will hardly solve the problem of annual spike in pollution in the northern states.

In a bid to reduce paddy stubble burning in Punjab and Haryana that leads to massive air pollution in the National Capital Region and surrounding areas every winter, the government is aggressively pushing for state-run power plants to use at least 10 per cent of the leftover stubble as fuel. Some farm equipment makers, however, claim the straw produced by paddy farming is way more than the total capacity of power