Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS
Somewhere in Punjab, a machine waits in a shed for October. It has steel blades, a seed box and a promise: sow wheat straight through the straw, and there is no reason to light a match.
The promise is repeated every year, in subsidy schemes, laboratory papers and conference speeches. And every year, as the light turns amber, the fires return anyway.
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Part 1 of The Stubble Files asked why farmers burn. This part asks something harder: if science has built the cure, why does the match still win? The answer lies less in the machine than in everything around it.
THE CURE THAT ARRIVED LATE
The combine harvester reached India’s fields in the mid-1990s, leaving behind the tall stalks that hand harvesting never did. The laboratory’s answer came years later. In 2001, researchers at Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) and Australia’s CSIRO built the first Happy Seeder, in a project linked to the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research.
The Happy Seeder’s rotor clears a narrow furrow for each row of seed and leaves the rest of the straw on the soil as mulch, a 2024 study in Scientific Reports describes. Mulch is a protective layer that holds moisture in and keeps weeds down. The Super Seeder works differently: a rotavator, a set of spinning blades, tills the whole width and churns most of the straw into the soil as it sows. Both need the combine to spread the straw evenly first, using an attachment called the Super Straw Management System, or Super SMS.
As late as 2017, the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS) counted about 3,000 Turbo Happy Seeders, a later model, against a need for 60,000 to cover half the rice-wheat area. Wide use began only in 2018, when a central scheme offered a 50 per cent subsidy to individual farmers and 80 per cent to custom-hiring centres (CHCs), which rent machines out. Punjab now has 1,37,407 such machines and 25,417 centres under the scheme, according to the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), a policy research institute.
The gap is long: 23 years from the combine to the scheme, and 17 from the prototype to the subsidy. Yet the fires have not ended.
The official term for these methods is in-situ management, Latin for in place: the straw stays where it grew. Ex-situ means carting it away, which is the subject of Part 3. There is also no single best machine. The director of the Agricultural Technology Application Research Institute (ATARI) in Ludhiana, part of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), tells India Today Digital that the technologies cover “a continuum from complete residue incorporation to 100% surface retention”, and the right choice depends on the straw load, soil moisture, soil texture and field conditions.
THE CURE WITH CONDITIONS
A seeder is only the middle link of a chain, and every link has a deadline. PAU’s guidance for the 2025-26 wheat season asks farmers to give the paddy its last irrigation two weeks before harvest, so the soil still holds moisture at sowing. A combine fitted with Super SMS must then cut the crop.
Wheat should go in during the first fortnight of November, and PAU says each week of delay cuts yield by about 150 kg an acre. The seeder needs 5 kg more seed an acre, and farmers must watch for termites, rodents and, in fields heavy with straw, armyworm. Rotting straw also borrows nitrogen from the soil, so PAU asks for extra fertiliser at sowing and before the first two irrigations.
Even the best-timed field can defeat the machine. Dew wets the straw in the morning and evening, which limits how long a Happy Seeder or Super Seeder can work, and wet straw can choke the seed and fertiliser pipes, the Scientific Reports study notes. The Super Seeder’s wheat can emerge patchily and late, with more weeds and more lodging, which is wheat falling over.
“With uniform residue distribution, appropriate machinery, and precise seed placement, satisfactory seed germination and crop establishment can be achieved under residue-retained conditions,” the ATARI director said. ATARI is the arm of ICAR that carries research from laboratories to farmers’ fields.
Read that sentence again. It is a list of conditions. Each is reasonable, but packed into 25 days, they leave a small farmer no room to slip.
THE MACHINE THAT PAYS ON PAPER
Burning is free. Does the machine at least pay for itself? Studies disagree. A 2021 study in the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability by Alwin Keil and colleagues found no yield penalty and savings of about USD 136 a hectare in wheat production costs, plus water savings and timelier sowing. But a 2010 survey of 92 farmers by Dr Ridhima Gupta of the Indian Statistical Institute found the gain far thinner: about USD 16 a hectare saved on field preparation and a wheat profit under USD 8 a hectare, too little to persuade farmers on its own.
Yield is not the draw. An early economic evaluation by the Australian research body that helped fund the machine noted that long-term trials found no significant yield gain from mixing stubble into the soil rather than burning it.
The reward comes slowly. PAU says that after three or more years of keeping straw in the field, farmers can save about 20 kg of urea an acre from the fourth year.
The ATARI director says long-term trials show better productivity and soil health, and that “repeated crop residue burning depletes soil organic carbon, reduces microbial activity, impairs soil fertility, and causes substantial nitrogen losses.”
The science of the cure is sound. But the saving goes to the farmer who can reach the machine on the right day, and a farmer decides afresh each October.
THE SHARED MACHINE THAT NEVER QUITE ARRIVES
Most farmers cannot buy such machines, so they rent. A CEEW report of September 2025, based on interviews with 65 centre operators in Ludhiana, Patiala and Sangrur, found that only about 15 per cent of Punjab farmers using in-field methods rented from CHCs, though the centres own about 45 per cent of the machines.
The reasons are practical. About 77 per cent of renting centres reported that machines were mishandled. Maintenance on a Super Seeder working 100 acres can cost Rs 10,000 to Rs 15,000 a season, which the report estimates at 35 to 55 per cent of rental income.
About 45 per cent of centres reported machines returned late. Fewer centres are buying: new purchases by Punjab’s CHCs fell from over half of new machines before 2022 to about a tenth in the last two years.
Cost compounds the delay. Punjab’s fixed rate for a Super Seeder is Rs 2,000 an acre with a tractor and operator, and Rs 500 without. The Rs 1,500 gap is the price of not owning a powerful tractor, which a farmer interviewed by Kisan Tak put at Rs 8.5 lakh for 55 horsepower.
The state is now subsidising the missing piece: revised 2024 guidelines give CHCs an 80 per cent subsidy on tractors of 60 horsepower and above. But only about half the surveyed centres fully understood the changes.
Then there is time. PAU’s package of practices says a Super Seeder needs a tractor of 55 horsepower or more and covers about 4.5 to 5.5 acres a day. At that pace one machine needs 18 to 22 days to cover 100 acres, nearly the whole window, while every neighbour wants it on the same days. That is arithmetic from the two figures, not a measured figure.
Even the machines age. CEEW also lists obsolescence, with Happy Seeders among the models that centres find outdated and urges a plan to retire old machines. PAU’s newer Smart Seeder tills only a narrow strip for each seed row and leaves the straw between rows as mulch. PAU says it needs a 45-horsepower tractor and covers 7 to 8 acres a day. In on-farm trials it gave 5.12 tonnes of wheat a hectare against 5.10 for the Happy Seeder, the Scientific Reports study found.
“Merely ensuring machinery availability is not sufficient; the emphasis must shift towards timely access, reliable functionality, optimal utilization, and strengthening Custom Hiring Centre (CHC) services,” the ATARI director said.
THE SPRAY THAT NEEDS A WARMER OCTOBER
The third fix is the Pusa decomposer, from the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI): microbe capsules brewed into a liquid and sprayed on stubble, meant to rot it in the field. Kisan Tak’s reporting calls it very cheap, but puts the time needed at about a month.
Dr Sandeep Sharma, a soil microbiologist at PAU, points to a mixed record. An IARI field study found that fungal inoculation raised carbon dioxide emission two- to threefold between 15 and 60 days, a sign of microbes working faster. Another study found that spraying cut the straw’s carbon-to-nitrogen ratio by about 20 per cent in 10 days and 37 per cent in 20 days against untreated straw. In Odisha’s warmer rice-rice system, a microbial mix decomposed 40 to 45 per cent of the straw in 21 to 25 days, which still leaves well over half.
Punjab was different. “Under Punjab conditions, microbial consortium application did not significantly reduce the C:N ratio in residue-retained soils,” Dr Sharma said, possibly because falling temperatures after the October harvest slow the microbes. That finding comes from a 2024 study in BioResources on which he is a co-author. Microbes, like farmers, work to the calendar and the thermometer.
THE SEED SCIENCE BRED AND THEN BANNED
The calendar has a third squeeze, the seed itself. Pusa-44, an IARI variety, is a long-duration rice that PAU’s current package of practices tells farmers not to grow. It uses 15 to 20 per cent more water than PR varieties, produces more straw and needs extra pesticide sprays. It also matures late, about 130 days after transplanting, according to a note placed before the National Green Tribunal that draws on PAU data. Transplanted in late June, it leaves 0 to 5 days between harvest and wheat sowing.
It once covered 39 per cent of Punjab’s non-Basmati paddy area, in 2012. By 2018 the share had fallen to 17.7 per cent, the same note shows, as PAU steered farmers towards water-saving varieties.
The replacement, PR 126, matures about 93 days after transplanting, PAU says, which leaves 28 to 40 days. PAU itself advises short-duration varieties to “increase the window period for straw management.” The trade paid off for water: PR 126 saves nine irrigations and Rs 4,151 an acre in variable costs against Pusa-44, the note says. But its net profit was only Rs 176 an acre higher.
Farmers are paid a minimum support price (MSP), the government’s assured price, which does not rise if a new variety yields less. A margin that thin leaves little room for a bad year.
THE HIDDEN PRICE OF NOT BURNING
Burying straw is not free of cost either. “Yes, incorporating straw can increase methane emissions when rice fields are flooded, because methanogens decompose organic matter under oxygen-poor conditions,” Dr Sharma said. Methanogens are microbes that make methane, a potent greenhouse gas, in waterlogged soil. The net result depends on water management, he added, and on how it balances against the carbon dioxide and fine particles that burning releases.
A 2023 review in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment found that adding straw raised methane from rice fields by 92 per cent on average and that organic matter “generally does not result in a net climate benefit.” Adding it earlier helps, but rice-wheat farms have little time. The review compared straw with removal, not with burning.
So, there is no free option. Burning fouls the air today. Burying may warm the planet tomorrow. Science has given the farmer a menu of trade-offs, not an answer.
HANDS TIED
None of this means the science is wrong. It means it was built for a field, not a farmer. The law pulled sowing later. The calendar shrank. The machine wants a powerful tractor, the spray wants a warm October, and the short-duration seed wants a farmer willing to gamble on a price. Each fix works on paper, and each hands its risk back to the person least able to carry it.
In the shed, the machine still waits. Its blades are sharp and its promise is sound. What it lacks is the one thing no laboratory can deliver with it: a farmer with enough time, money, and margin to say yes.
If the straw cannot always be buried, can it be sold? In Part 3, we follow the bale.
– Ends
SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA
