Stubble Fire
New Delhi: In a move that could considerably reduce air pollution in the National Capital caused by stubble burning, the Union Government today revised the crop residue management guidelines enabling efficient ex-situ management of paddy straw generated in Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi.
As per the revised guidelines, techno-commercial pilot projects for the paddy straw supply chain will be established under the bilateral agreement between the farmers, rural entrepreneurs, cooperative societies of farmers, Farmers Producer Organizations (FPOs) and panchayats (the beneficiary/aggregators); and industries utilizing the paddy straw.
The government will provide financial assistance on the capital cost of machinery and equipment. The required working capital may be financed either by the industry and the beneficiary jointly or utilizing the Agriculture Infrastructure Fund (AIF), NABARD Financial or financing from the financial institutions by the beneficiary. The land for storage of the collected paddy straw will be arranged and prepared by the beneficiary as may be guided by the end-use industry.
Also read: Stubble Burning: The deadly link between pollution and pandemic
Project proposal-based financial assistance will be extended for machines and equipment such as higher HP tractors, cutters, tedder, medium to large balers, rakers, loaders, grabbers and telehandlers which are essentially required for the establishment of the paddy straw supply chain.
State Governments shall approve these projects through a project sanctioning committee.
The Central and State Governments will jointly provide financial support of 65% of the project cost, the Industry as the primary promoter of the project will contribute 25% and will act as the primary consumer of the feedstock collected and the farmer or group of farmers or rural entrepreneurs or cooperative societies of farmers or Farmers Producer Organizations (FPOs), or panchayats will be the direct beneficiary of the project and will contribute the balance 10%.
The outcomes of the above interventions are:
- The initiative will supplement the efforts of paddy straw management through in-situ options
- During the three-year tenure of the interventions, 1.5 million metric tonnes of surplus paddy straw are expected to be collected which would otherwise have been burnt in fields.
- About 333 biomass collection depots of capacity 4500 MT will be built in the States of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.
- Air pollution caused by stubble burning will be considerably reduced.
- It would generate employment opportunities of about 9,00,000 man-days.
- The interventions will encourage a robust supply chain management of paddy straw which shall further help in making paddy straw available for various end uses i.e., power generation, heat generation, bio-CNG, etc. by Power/bio-CNG/bio-ethanol producers
- The establishment of a supply chain would result in new investments in Biomass to biofuel and energy sectors.
– global bihari bureau
