The Government can incentivise villages that exhibit no stubble burning; that will create peer pressure among the farmers to comply
The months of October and November witness a massive surge in smog over Delhi and surrounding areas and every one starts talking about stubble burning by Punjab and Haryana farmers. Many solutions have been proposed to mitigate this in the last few years. The most popular ones being Happy Seeders, biomass production, and straw balers. The Union government has provided huge subsidies for crop residue management (CRM) machinery which includes alternative uses of stubble or incorporating it back into the soil. There has been a marginal improvement in the situation, yet now here close to the complete elimination of the problem. There are two main challenges to making farmers adopt these solutions. Firstis the behavioural change among farmers. The second is an effective last-mile delivery of technologies and services. Behavioural issues range from farmers’ perception that fields are only clean when they are free of stubble and mulch. They also have a false impression that wheat yields are lower when using CRM. Last-mile delivery issues range from the need for high-powered tractors, a limited window for CRM, shorter business viability of CRM machines, and financing for buying the machines. Thechallenges can be addressed by developing village-level entrepreneurs to build trust among farmers and some tweaks in the processes and support mechanisms of the government. To a large extent, behavioural change is a function of trust. Hence, a hyperlocal changeagent must be involved in building trust among farmers and help them understand the benefits of new technologies. Ideally, an educated and unemployed rural youth should be identified in each village to act as the changeagent. The first activity that the changeagent should undertake is to setup a five to 10-acre demonstration farm using CRM and creating awareness among 50 to 100 farmers in the village. If we can setup entrepreneurs and demonstration farms in all the 12,789 villages in Punjab in the next two years, half the battle would be won.
The second step is to focus on catalysingthe demand and supply of in-situ CRM machines like the Happy Seeders. There are two ways in which this can be done. One, enable the entrepreneurs to purchase Happy Seeders and provide services to farmers. Two, let entrepreneurs aggregate the demand and passit on to custom hiring centers and Farming As a Service (FAAS) operators.The financial viability of Happy Seeders would increase if the machine could also be utilized for direct seeding of rice (that saves water and avoids methane emissions) andalso for sowing crops like maize, gram, pulses, etc.
The entrepreneurs will not be successful if their business model is based on an activity that spans just two months a year. Hence, it is important to diversify the income-earning opportunities for entrepreneurs. They could cater to other farm needs such as providing animal feed, agri inputs or providing market linkages. Most entrepreneurs could also double up as digital banking agents providing basic banking services and selling rural insurance products. In this way, they could also earn the trust of their fellow farmers by providing additional services and creating value for them.
Ultimately, it is the result that matters along with the process. Instead of providing capital subsidies, the government could explore providing subsidies to the Happy Seeder operators for every acre of CRM. With the deployment of telematics in tractors, Happy Seeders and Combines with Super Straw Management Systems, it is easy to track the number of acres under CRM.A number of FAAS operators and custom hiring centres would be motivated to cover more acres under CRM. Secondly, one of the biggest challenges for first-time entrepreneurs is access to finance. Hence, the government and other organizations should create financial instruments such as first-loss guarantees and credit scoring mechanisms for entrepreneurs. This would give confidence to the financial institutions,which in turn would give loans to entrepreneurs withrelative ease.
The government should create a carbon financing framework to register clusters of villages to reduce emissions from stubble burn and zero tillage. The government can use these funds to incentivize villages that exhibit no stubble burning. Incentives at a village level will create peer pressure among farmers to comply and end stubble burning.
Bringing about behavioural change among farmers takes time and there will be no quick gains. However, gaining the trust of farmers by demonstrating the benefits of CRM technologies, subsidizing per acre CRM costs, and providing value-added services through entrepreneurs will shorten the time to achieve the goal of zero stubble burning.
(The writer is Executive Director at Syngenta Foundation India. The views expressed are personal.)