Mitigating agricultural residue burning in Punjab, India

India faces significant air quality challenges, contributing to local health and global climate concerns. Despite a national ban on agricultural residue burning and various incentive schemes, farmers in northern India continue to face difficulties in curbing open-field burning.

Subhrendu Pattanayak, the Oak Foundation Distinguished Professor of Environmental and Energy Policy in the Sanford School of Public Policy, and Krishnapriya Perumbillissery, a research scientist at the Sanford School, sought to understand how and why farmers who contribute to seasonal agricultural fires may change their land use practices.

In the article “Mitigating agricultural residue burning: challenges and solutions across land classes in Punjab, India,” Pattanayak and Perumbillissery, along with coauthors E. Somanathan, Indian Statistical Institute; Alwin Keil, Unique Land Use GmbH; M.L. Jat, International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics; H.S. Sidhu, Punjab Agricultural University; and Priya Shyamsundar, The Nature Conservancy; examine paddy residue burning in the Indo-Gangetic plains of north-west India, a region that is important because it ensures food security in India by producing large quantities of food crops.

“Using data from 1021 farming households in rural Punjab in India, we examine the patterns and drivers of the adoption of no-burn agriculture, particularly for farmers who mulch instead of burning crop residue,” the authors wrote. “We find a growing trend in no-burn farming practices among farmers between 2015 and 2017, with the highest adoption rates among large farmers compared to medium and small farmers."

Their findings suggest that access to equipment and learning opportunities may increase the likelihood of farmers using straw as mulch instead of burning it. "Specifically, social learning appears to increase the likelihood of farmers embracing no-burn practices relative to learning from extension agencies," the authors wrote. "Furthermore, the form of learning depends on farm size. While large and medium farmers exhibit a variety of learning strategies, small farmers primarily self-learn. These results underscore the importance of a multiprong policy that provides sufficient access to equipment and a combination of learning platforms that enabling farmers from different land classes to adopt no-burn technologies.”

The article is published in Environmental Research: Food Systems, a multidisciplinary, open access journal devoted to addressing the science of sustainable food systems.