Rice Residue Burning in Punjab: Situation and Solution

Intensive cultivation has contributed immensely to the overall development of Punjab but at the cost of environmental sustainability. Residue generated from rice cultivation is neither used as animal feed nor farmers have enough time to collect it. In order to get rid of the residue farmers burn nearly 12–13 Mt rice straw every year. This generates average 11, 606 gG of CO₂ every year, which amount to $203 million in terms of carbon credit. Farmer still burns rice residue as they do not consider indirect cost of environmental degradation and nutrient loss. Satellite images show that fire incident mostly occurs during last days of October and the first week of November. All legal, technical, institutional and R&D stakeholders must be brought on a common platform to achieve better results.