Those who live in the Capital are well-aware of the hazards of living in the city. Hate crime, road rage, gang rape and now breathing toxic air has become part and parcel of our lives especially with the onset of winters. Shalini Saksena brings you a report on how delayed cropping is the real culprit
Every dark cloud has a silver lining. It appears that Delhiites and most parts of North India breathing toxic air due to stubble burning may get some respite when the officials of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi were pulled up the the Supreme Court, last week, for their failure to control the air pollution that has gripped most cities of North India including Delhi. The SC said: “The time has come to punish officers.”
It was the Chief Secretary of Punjab who faced much of the wrath. “Is this way? We will suspend from here. Why are you the Chief Secretary of Punjab? It is your failure,” the two-judge bench comprising Justices Arun Mishra and Deepak Gupta said in a hearing that lasted beyond court hours. “People are dying. 1800 is the level of pollution. Flights are diverted. You are proud of your achievement,” the court said.
Stressing that agriculture was the backbone of the economy and farmers needed support from the Government, the SC directed Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh to provide support of Rs 100 per quintal to those small and marginal farmers, who had yet not burnt their stubble, within seven days.
The effective stubble fires in Punjab and Haryana is showing an increasing trend and on its peak value of this year (3178) which has increased its share significantly to 46 per cent,” SAFAR said.
Alarmingly, satellite data showed that over 8,000 cases of stubble burning were detected in Punjab from October 28 to November 4, with Sangrur recording 1,343 incidents. In Haryana, the data showed more than 500 stubble burning incidents detected during the period.
Are we finally paying the price for the Green Revolution of the 1960s? The data is proof enough how around six decades spent in making the country self-sufficient in food grains means that today, Delhi is paying a price.
Arvind Kumar, whose original research published in the Sunday Guardian solved the mystery of why Delhi was covered in smoke only in recent years despite the burning of fields in Punjab going on for a long time tells you while crop diversification is important for farmers and that is not the direct reason for stubble burning.
“Crop diversification has been used as one of the excuses along with conservation of water by the Government to force farmers to grow other crops before the paddy season. This gives them very little time after harvesting rice to clear their fields for sowing wheat and farmers under pressure find burning the fields to be the easiest and cheapest way to clear the fields,” Kumar says who is based in Houston, Texas.
He tells you that there’s concrete proof that crop burning is the reason for the smoke. “Before 2006, there was smoke but it stayed in Punjab as the burning took place before the winds changed direction. We did not have this problem of this magnitude in Delhi before 2006,” Kumar says.
Since the shift to delay paddy sowing started in 2007, the smog has always been over Delhi. “We started seeing the smoke even before 2015. It started in 2007 as the Government persuaded farmers to delay the planting of rice, and its intensity increased after 2009. We have had this problem every year since then,” Kumar says.
According to Bhupinder Singh Mann, Bhartiya Kisan Union President and All India Kisan Coordination Committee Chairman, the entire controversy that surrounds stubble burning is financial.
“We know that as farmers we should think logically but like everyone else, he too thinks financially. Here is an example. The farmer will grow only that crop for which he will get the cost. Be it rice or maize. Traditionally, Punjab is a wheat growing region. However, there has been a steady push to switch to paddy. The farmer doesn’t have to be convinced. He gets a better price per quintal as set by the Government as minimum support price for rice as compared to wheat. Given this, why would he grow wheat? Since more and more farmers switched to paddy, it meant that the crop needed more water. The paddy fields in Punjab are not irrigated via canal water. Farmers exploited ground water. Over the years, the ground level has gone down. While, at one point, one could get water at 30-40 feet, the level is now down to 250-300 feet adding to the cost of production,” Maan says who manages 60 acres of family farms.
This is where the problem comes, he asserts and tells you why there has been a push to shift paddy cultivation that used to take place in April to six weeks later. “The intelligentsia has its own take on the situation. After much deliberation and thought, they came up with the Preservation of Subsoil and Water Act of 2009. This meant that the paddy that used to be sown in April, it is now done in June, its harvesting shifting as well from September to October. Traditionally, when the paddy was harvested in September, the smoke from stubble burning would hang over Punjab. With the push in harvesting and shift in winds from end September the smoke spreads to neighbouring States,” Mann explains.
He tells you that the farmer is none too happy when it comes to burning the stubble since he too has to breathe the polluted air. Unfortunately, he has no option. “The cost that comes at not burning stubble is too high and the marginalised farmer can’t pay this. The cost of the machine to deal with the stubble is high. The farmer has two options. First, he can cut it and leave it in the land to let it turn into a natural fertiliser. No doubt that the land and the yield will benefit. But for the stubble to turn into a fertiliser, it takes two-three years. Suppose the farmer wants to do this, the cost of the tractor to till the land and mix the stubble into the soil is too much. He has to burn the stubble. When the Government sets the minimum support price, it doesn’t account for the cost that goes into not burning stubble. If the farmer gets this cost, the Government can pull up the farmer on the ground that since he has already been paid the cost to not burn the residue and if he is doing it, he can be booked for the offence,” Mann says.
Now, of the farmer wanted to sow paddy in April, he would have to ensure that the soil was moist instead of puddling to cultivate paddy. To use the former technique, it would mean excessive use of fertilisers to prevent weeds, which is not good. There is an option to physically weed it out. The cost is too much for the farmer to bear. We want clear air and crops that are fertiliser-free. This comes at a cost. The problem is that nobody is willing to pay this extra cost,” Mann says.
Advocate Charanpal Singh Bagri, who was in the Capital to represent the farmers in the stubble case that was heard by the SC tells you the kisan doesn’t have the technology to deal with the stubble. “We want the court to direct the Government to give money to deal with the stubble and not burn it. What the farmer does after that, is his problem. When the SC heard the case, last week, and came to know the ground reality, it directed the compensation for those who have not burnt the stubble yet. Farmers are country’s backbone. Instead of taking money from them, the farmer should be given money to deal with the stubble,” Bagri says, who’s a farmer himself.
Kumar tells you that according to the International Water Management Institute, water in rice fields contributes to recharging the groundwater and very little of it is lost to evaporation.
Strangely, there is a push to move away from growing paddy in the name of crop diversification by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) which behaves like a front group for US multinational corporations like Monsanto. The fact that India is food-sufficient brings discomfort for organisations that are pushing for GM crops in the name of making world food sufficient.
For those who opine that there is little connection between Monsanto and stubble burning, Kumar has a take. “The part where USAID and Monsanto play a role is in the timing of the burning. There is enough reason to investigate them and the origin of the laws in Punjab and Haryana based on the fact that it is Monsanto’s crop that was supposed to replace rice. When I first wrote my article in 2017, a scientist from NASA’s Goddard Center who works on pollution tweeted that he realised after reading my article why satellites detect more fires in November only post-2009. The shift had begun in 2007 and this can be easily tied to the fact that the Punjab Government had encouraged farmers in 2007 to start the shift and used a Government notification in 2008 to force them to delay growing rice,” Kumar tells you.
Why would Punjab shift to growing maize? Kumar tells you that this should not be a priority as most of the maize is used for chicken feed, but the Government has been influenced by USAID which acts as a front for Monsanto and other corporations. The least the Government can do now is to investigate them.
“The reason for the push to grow maize, as chicken feed, is to conserve water but this argument doesn’t hold much water as the Government has encouraged farmers to grow both maize and cotton. Cotton consumes more water than rice and Monsanto’s Bt Cotton dominates the Indian cotton sector. While the production of every kg of rice requires 3,000 litres of water, the production of a kg of cotton requires 25,000 litres of water. If one looks at the total production of each of these crops per hectare, it becomes clear that the amount of water used per hectare of cotton is more than the amount of water used per hectare of rice,”Kumar says.
He opines that growing maize for chicken feed is not intentional but Monsanto’s maize is unfit for human consumption and if they grow this GMO maize, it is only good enough for chicken feed.
“Profits for individual farmers is not more important than India’s self-sufficiency in food production. India reached self-sufficiency in food production without GMO, but there has been propaganda in recent times that GMO food is needed to feed the world even though that claim is not backed by data,” Kumar says.
The biggest challenge facing Punjab farmers is that even thought they are among the richest farmers in the country, but they do not realise that there are moves to destroy their livelihoods and replace them by large multinational corporations that practice factory-farming.
“Farmers get swayed by short-term profits they get by growing crops like Monsanto’s Bt Cotton, but they end up ceding control to Monsanto. There are many example of multinational behemouth taking over the agriculture of entire nations. USA is a prime example. Countries like Haiti were taken over with the help of policies laid down by WTO and American politicians helping large corporations. One fact that has gone under the radar screen is that there are efforts to make it difficult for Punjab’s farmers to hire labour for their fields in order to help multinational corporations sell their equipment to farmers. If this becomes a reality, the cost of operating a farm will go up and it will be difficult to sustain the business and farmers will be forced to voluntarily sell their businesses to large multinational corporations. One matter that should concern all of us is that USAID is involved in Punjab’s labour market too which means that they are actively involved in manipulating the State’s labour market,” Kumar tells you.
Bagri explains that it is not so easy to till the farm with stubble with ordinary tractor. A special tractor is needed that costs Rs 8-Rs 10 lakh. A small-time farmer can’t afford this.
“I have also filed a petition. When the paddy is harvested, it creates pollution. When we sow it, we use drinking water to cultivate it. Drinking water will disappear from the State. Today, we are choking due to smog, tomorrow we will die of thirst. One should let farmers revert to traditional farming. We should divide the State into zones. Where one can grown paddy, where one can grow maize, where one can grow pulses and where to grow potato.
“Did you know that farmers in Punjab don’t grow potato? It’s production is so much that farmer just throws it into the streets. Government buys only two foodgrains — rice and wheat. Why should the Punjab farmer grow paddy? Who eats rice in the State? But the farmer is pushed into growing it. Even then, you don’t have the facility to store excess paddy. The State has open storage. Thousands of quintal are lost when it rains,” Bagri tells you and adds that with only 1.5 per cent land, Punjab is producing 50 per cent food-grain for the country.
“The farmer in the State is being taken for a ride. He is being made a fool of. It is time to stop this. My request to the top court is to divide zone-wise what to grow where be it paddy, pulses, wheat or even maize,” Bagri says.
Does this mean that the first maize-based park that is being developed by Sukhjit Starch & Chemicals at Rihana Jattan village in Kapurthala district of Punjab at an investment of Rs 123.7 crore with a grant of Rs 50 crore by the Ministry of Food Processing Industries, a step towards a push to grow GM corn?
“That will definitely happen as corporations take over the lands of farmers or turn them into de facto contract employees and control the agriculture sector in India. India needs to guard against factory-farming replacing the traditional methods of farming and ownership of farms by large corporations. That danger is now real,” Kumar says.
His solution? “The Government needs to take immediate action of getting Punjab and Haryana to roll back their laws delaying the planting of rice. This can be easily enforced by offering minimum support price only before a certain date. That would still leave us with the problem of smoke in Punjab which needs to be dealt with as well. To solve that problem, the government needs to invest in machines to clear the fields and do it at no cost to farmers,”Kumar says.
