Agriculture in India : News, Updates, Discussion & Analysis


Thiruvallur: G. Murugan’s farm in Neyveli village is a carpet of green, rustling in the wind with water-filled paddy crop. But one acre in this farmland is a blazing spot of blood red from chilli crop. Murugan is part of a group of 400 paddy farmers who have signed up for what is being called Tamil Nadu’s first step towards a “Red Revolution”.

Coaxing farmers away from water-guzzling paddy towards cash crops like chilli has been the work of a company called Aachi Masala, which has also guaranteed to buy the harvest at market price and assured a minimum rate as well

“Convincing the farmers was no joke,” said A.D. Padmasingh Isaac, Managing Director of Aachi Masal

This is the next generation of agricultural innovation in the state, said Isaac. His company conducted over 200 meetings with farmers across villages in Thiruvallur. A first-generation entrepreneur, Issac wants the Red Revolution to be an education model to be spread across the state, where pesticide-free crops are
 

Tikait being taken apart by one of his own. Frankly this would have more of an impact on his constituency given that he's been complaining that the negative reaction he's received are all thanks to Godi media.

BTW I've turned into a fan of this interviewer ( this being the 1st time I'm seeing her) .I've never come across a mainstream Hindi channel broadcast an interview in "thet Haryanvi, " with the interviewer playing a smiling assasin with elan & enjoying herself too - all this without the high decibel theatrics associated with TV these days. Quite attractive looking too, I must admit.
 
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India takes new steps to kick old habits of stubble burning

By Pratik Parija, Bloomberg
Last Updated: Dec 31, 2021, 10:40 AM IST
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The low-cost bio-enzyme, called Pusa decomposer, breaks down straw and turns it into fertilizer.

Synopsis
Farmers are often blamed for northern India’s terrible air quality. Every winter, smoke from stubble burning mixes with construction dust and industrial emissions to produce a toxic cocktail that blots out the sun, grounds flights and overwhelms hospitals. The haze lingers in the region’s trough-like topography for weeks.

Sanju is on a mission. For weeks, she has traveled from village to village, urging farmers in India to stop burning stubble from harvested rice crops near New Delhi.

As winds slow during the winter months, a poisonous haze collects over northern India. During the worst stretches, the region’s air pollution can reach multiple times the global safety threshold. Stubble burning is one of the leading causes of the smog.

Sanju, 24, who goes by one name, is among several hundred gig workers in Haryana — all of them women — trying to reverse that trend. She encourages farmers to spray a white substance on their fields to decompose crop residue, rather than set it ablaze. Her work forms part of one of the most ambitious attempts to eliminate stubble burning in India.

“It’s a win-win situation for farmers,” said Dhruv Sawhney, the chief operating officer of nurture.farm, a digital platform promoting sustainable agriculture that is overseeing the project. In addition to hiring on-the-ground messengers like Sanju, his group provided the decomposer for free to 25,000 farmers this year.

Sawhney said the new organic spray, which was developed by the state-run Indian Agricultural Research Institute, has helped prevent farmers from burning over 385,000 acres of rice paddies. The low-cost bio-enzyme, called Pusa decomposer, breaks down straw and turns it into fertilizer.

Over the next three years, nurture.farm plans to expand its coverage area to 5.7 million acres at an annual cost of Rs 600 crore ($80 million). Even if the company starts charging for the powder, many farmers say they would continue using it, in part because they end up saving on fertilizer costs. India, the world’s biggest grower of cotton and second-largest producer of rice, wheat and sugar, is being squeezed by a global shortage of fertilizers.

“I don’t mind spending a nominal amount on this but it should be reasonable otherwise I will again resort to my earlier practice of burning the crop,” said Anil Kalyan, 58, who used the decomposer on 40 acres of his farm. This year marked the first time in four decades he has not burned the stubble.

The bio-enzyme breaks down crop residue in about three weeks on average and increases organic carbon in the soil. On some farms, crops disintegrated even faster, within about a week, an encouraging sign as more farmers use the decomposer, Sawhney said.

Farmers are often blamed for northern India’s terrible air quality. Every winter, smoke from stubble burning mixes with construction dust and industrial emissions to produce a toxic cocktail that blots out the sun, grounds flights and overwhelms hospitals. The haze lingers in the region’s trough-like topography for weeks.

But political will to find a solution has dragged, largely because farmers lacked a cost-effective alternative. Technologies like the Happy Seeder, a machine that sows seeds while simultaneously removing straw and depositing it over the fields as mulch, are too cumbersome and expensive. There are also plants that use the straw to make ethanol, but there’s not enough capacity currently.

So far, farmers say, the decomposer is a promising breakthrough.

Satinder Sharma, 62, who harvests wheat in Haryana, expects his yield to improve by 10% this year. He spends less now on fertilizers such as urea and diammonium phosphate, a boost to his earnings. A bonus, he said, is doing his part to ensure clean air for the next generation.

The decomposer will “save the soil and plants next to the fields and the produce will be better for health,” he said. “It was a curse of nature to burn the crops and we were contributing to that.”

— With assistance from Sanjit Das.

India takes new steps to kick old habits of stubble burning
 
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Agriculture in India = loan Waiver
Worst deal in the history of deals!

From the seeds, fertilizer, diesel, electricity, to its selling part, everything is subsidised , not by Modi's personal bank account, but by Income Tax of the few.

Still farmers every year want a loan waiver ?

If they don't want to improve the good way, then so be it. Give large companies some kind of incentive to invest in large scale farming.

Slowly and slowly either they will find another way or die out. Anyways we are approximately 50 crore too much than our resources can handle.
 
Free stuff and waivers is how civilisations are destroyed. One works 9 hours a day , 5 days a week minimum, pays the taxes and enjoys amenities to simplify one's life. That is a simple thing we Indians know but ignore.