By Sarita Brara
Every year, the beginning of the paddy harvesting season in Punjab brings fears of smog and air pollution arising from stubble burning. Last year was no exception. There were 36,663 incidents of farm fires during the kharif season in 2023. One may draw some comfort from the fact that such incidents have witnessed a declining trend over the last few years. Against the total of 83,002 paddy stubble burning incidents in Punjab in 2020, farm fire counts in the following years were 71,304 and 49,922 in 2021 and 2022 respectively, and the downward trend continued in 2023.
In order to mitigate the problem of stubble burning, which raises Air Quality Index levels even in Delhi NCR, the Punjab state government has taken several measures for management of paddy straw. This includes encouraging the setting up of compressed biogas (CBG)/bio-CNG plants that utilise stubble straw.
The state government has so far allotted 48 CBG projects, with a total capacity of 557.58 tpd, that will use paddy straw and other agro-residues. These projects will consume about 1,867,000 tonnes of paddy straw on an annual basis. Of these, four are already operational, and two are expected to be commissioned in the next four to five months. The Punjab Energy Development Agency (PEDA) has also signed a memorandum of understanding with GAIL India and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited for 10 projects each, which will collectively consume 700,000 tonnes of paddy straw.
The largest CBG project, with a capacity of 33.23 tpd, was allotted to M/s. Verbio India Private Limited, Chandigarh. It is located in the village of Bhutal Kalan in Sangrur district. This project was commissioned in April 2022. The CBG produced at the plant is being sold at the outlets of Indian Oil Corporation Limited. The annual paddy straw consumption is 130,000 tonnes. The company has imported machinery for the aggregation of paddy straw, which is sourced from a catchment area of up to 30 km.
By preventing paddy straw from being burnt, the venture has made a positive impact on the environment by eliminating 150,000 million tonnes (mt) of pollutants (produced from stubble burning) and 20,000 mt of fly ash on a yearly basis.
The substitution of automotive fuel with CBG has eliminated 115,000 mt of pollutants annually. The plant also produces 550 tpd of bio-manure (191 kilo tonnes per year). This has helped in enriching the soil across 2,750 acres of land, according to the company. It also claims that 5,000 families of farmers have benefited from the project, and direct and indirect employment has been provided to 1,000 persons per unit.
The second biggest plant in Punjab that produces CBG based on paddy straw and other agro-residues is owned by Farm Gas Private Limited (an associate company of IRM Energy Limited). The project became operational in February last year. The start-up, which has a capacity of 30,000 cubic metres (m³) of biogas per day or 12 tpd of CBG, is located in Ghungreli village in Ludhiana district. It is dispensing 8,000 kg of CBG per day. The unit consumes 30,000 mt of paddy straw annually.
According to Pankaj Singh, a senior manager in the company, its annual requirement of paddy straw was already procured last season from balers across 40-50 villages within a radius of 15-20 km, at the rate of Rs 1,650 per tonne. The challenge, says Singh, is to procure paddy straw within the short period between the harvesting of paddy and the sowing of wheat. The company has signed a tripartite agreement with IRM Energy Limited and GAIL for the sale of biogas/CBG under the CBG-city gas distribution (CGD) synchronisation scheme. It has set up Punjab’s first decompression skid at Mandi Gobindgarh, to inject the biogas/CBG into the CGD pipeline. Currently, Farm Gas is feeding CBG into the natural gas pipeline network and, in turn, supplying it to industries in Mandi Gobindgarh as per their requirement. It is also setting up its second CBG retail outlet in collaboration with Punjab Agro Industries Corporation in Jalandhar City, as well as a network of CBG retail stations in Ludhiana and Jalandhar City. The company also plans to set up a ground-mounted solar system to generate green power for running the plant.
Each of the other two operational plants has the capacity to produce 48,000 m3 of biogas per day or 20 tpd of CBG, and consumes 68,000 tonnes of paddy straw annually. Both are special purpose vehicles of Everenviro Resource Management Private Limited, Ludhiana. One is based in Jaikhar village in Patiala district, while the other is in Fatehgarh village in Sangrur district. Subsidies ranging from Rs 40 million to Rs 100 million are being provided for setting up paddy straw-based plants, depending on their capacity. A subsidy of 50 per cent is also being provided to individual farmers for the procurement of specific equipment for crop residue management. Moreover, financial assistance is being provided, up to a limit, for setting up paddy straw supply chains (for 3,000 mt of paddy straw per season).
Punjab currently has 117,672 crop residue management (CRM) machines and around 23,792 custom hiring centres. The state also had plans to procure more than 23,000 machines last year. Further, mobile apps such as i-Khet have been introduced to help farmers access agricultural machinery or equipment for in-situ management of crop residue. Cooperative machinery trackers have been put in place to ensure the availability of CRM machines. The state government has also identified land parcels for enhancing straw storage capacity. Bio-decomposers were planned for 8,000 acres of paddy area in 2023.
Steps are being taken to spread awareness in order to reduce stubble burning incidents. These include painted slogans on walls in villages, print media advertisements, hoardings and panels at prominent places, education programmes in schools, leaflets for farmers, jingles on radio channels, and display boards. Progressive farmers are being incentivised to sensitise other farmers, to eliminate the burning of paddy straw.
The state seeks to manage around 11.5 mt of paddy straw through in-situ management, and about 4.67 mt through ex-situ management. There is, however, still a huge gap between the quantity of paddy straw generated, which was expected to be 20 million metric tonnes in the last kharif season, and the amount of stubble disposed. An estimated 7.3 mt of paddy straw is still being burnt in Punjab. The action plan had aimed to reduce the number of farm fires to half of what it was in 2022. While the number has been reduced, the goal has not been met.
As per 2022 data, the five districts of Punjab with the highest number of reported crop-burning incidents were Sangrur, Bathinda, Firozpur, Muktasar and Moga, together accounting for about 44 per cent of the total fire count of the state. Punjab Police claims to have registered 1,084 FIRs against errant farmers and imposed penalties worth Rs 18,700,000 across 7,990 cases since November 8, 2022.
Kulbir Singh Sandhu, joint director, PEDA, hopes that the various initiatives taken to manage stubble burning will further reduce air pollution, increase the production of gas from biomass, and add to the income of farmers by enabling them to simply sell paddy straw instead of burning it.
