Punjab Government has decided to provide crop residue management machinery to farmers at a substantial subsidy to curtail stubble burning across the State.
Informing this, the state Additional Chief Secretary (Development) Viswajeet Khanna said that as a part of the new scheme for Promotion of Agricultural Mechanization for In-Situ Management of Crop Residue, Rs 665 crore would be spent in two years on various components of the scheme.
Under this scheme, a package of agricultural machinery for stubble management would be provided at 80 percent subsidy to the Cooperative Societies and other groups, while the same would be given to the individuals at 50 percent subsidy, he said.
“In the last couple of years, various initiatives have been undertaken to sensitize farmers against stubble burning. But due to non-availability of microbial solution to decompose the large volume of paddy straw and limited time gap between harvesting of paddy and sowing of other crops, wheat and vegetables, the farmers generally resort to crop residue burning,” said Khanna.
He added that thus, the mechanical solutions have been worked out and to promote them at a large scale, awareness campaign would be kick started shortly.
“The campaign would focus on dispelling doubts regarding cons of mechanization and educating the farmers to use stubble management machinery,”he said.