COVID-19 pandemic and sudden rise in crop residue burning in India: issues and prospects for sustainable crop residue management

Abstract

The seasonal burning of crop residue significantly affects the environment, leading to poor air quality over Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP) in India. Hence, there have been significant efforts to minimize crop residue burning through policy, innovations, and awareness measures. However, an abrupt increase in paddy residue burning was observed over IGP during 2020. Hence, the study explores the factors leading to this sharp rise. The business as usual trends analysis revealed that paddy crop residue burning activities increased significantly (60%) in 2020 compared to the previous year. The massive increase in crop residue burning consequently seems to be linked with the COVID-19 pandemic, which affected the farmer's income, including the poor compliance by the regulatory authorities. The study also highlights the issues and prospects for sustainable crop residue management and explores the solutions to minimize crop residue burning. There are few crops in India that have guaranteed minimum sale price and are also subsidized. These provisions encourage farmers to grow those particular crops, resulting in the generation of large amounts of crop residue from these specific crops. There have been several efforts by the Indian government, including based on recent court intervention. Still, there is no respite from burning activities and the occurrence of Delhi winter smog every year. Hence, the study emphasizes a need to adopt integrated approaches having in situ eco-friendly solutions, which enhances the farmer's income and focuses on employability, capacity building, awareness generation, and in situ economically viable solutions.

Keywords: Agriculture policy; Air pollution; COVID-19; Crop residue burning; Fire counts; IGP.

Fig. 1

Crop residue burning activities over northern states of India (red dots) and a thick blanket of smoke over the Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP) region. ( Source: NASA worldview dated 6 November 2020).

Fig. 2

Trend of daily fire counts over Punjab and Haryana (green line, average 2012–2019; and red line, 2020 from 1 September–30 November) (a), total fire counts from 2012 to 2020 during 1 September–30 November for the year 2012–2020 (b).

Fig. 3

Timeline of critical policy interventions to curb air pollution and stubble burning in India