Poor stubble management | ‘CRM machines available with Punjab cooperative societies under-utilised’

Happy Seeder is a wheat sowing machine, which combines stubble mulching, sowing and fertiliser drilling operations into one machine, cut the selected rice straw and sows seeds into the bare soil and places the straw over the sown seed as a mulch. Super Seeder is for sowing wheat seed and simultaneous tillage and incorporation of whole straw in combined harvested paddy fields.

According to the report of the PRSC, there are 2,910 targeted societies across the state which have all the relevant CRM machines as well as tractors, as all these machines are tractor mounted.

Till last year these societies were owning over 15,000 CRM machines. This year also several types of machines were sanctioned to these societies out of a total of 1.05 lakh CRM machines distributed in the state to date in the past five years.

The report detailed that the average usage of each Happy Seeder was for just 2 hours in the season. Gurdaspur district has used it for maximum 16.5 hours followed by Barnala where the usage of this machine was 6.2 hours per machine in the past 49 days and in Sangrur it was used for 3.2 hours in the entire season.

In Fazilka no usage of available Happy Seeders with cooperatives was shown by the tracker. While it was 0.3-hour usage in Faridkot, 0.4-hour in Ludhiana, 0.5-hour in Nawanshahr, 0.6-hour in Kapurthala, 1 hour in Fatehgarh Sahib, 1.1 hours in Tarn Taran, 1.3 hours in Mohali, 1.4 hours each in Muktsar and Mansa Dan Hoshiarpur, 1.5 hours in Moga, 1.6 hours in Ferozpur, 1.7 hours in Amritsar, 1.9 hours in Bathinda, and 2.1 hours in Pathankot.

A Happy Seeder can sow wheat on at least 7-8 acres in a day and this implies that each Happy Seeder could not be run even for a day and was used just to cultivate 2-acre land in the entire season.

Similarly, every available RMB plough with cooperative societies was used for just 3.9 hours in the season which means that it was also used for ploughing just 2-3 acres of land. As for as the Rotavator and Mulcher are concerned, they were run for 6.9 hours which implies that they were not run beyond one day in the entire season. Super Seeder is the only machine which was run for 29.3 hours. A single Super Seeder can sow wheat on 5.2 acres of land in a day and with such calculation, each available Super Seeder with cooperative societies was used to cultivate wheat for 5-6 days only.

Barnala district topped the chart where each available Super Seeder in cooperative societies was used for 47.8 hours which was the maximum usage in the state followed by Nawanshahr and Sangrur where it was used for 45.9 hours and 45 hours, respectively. Faridkot, Bathinda, and Kapurthala also used this machine for 39.2 hours, 38.9 hours and 34.8 hours, respectively. In the remaining districts, its usage remained between 3.8 hours to 26.3 hours per machine.

Experts in the Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB) said that all such machines mainly Happy Seeder, Super Seeder should run at least 200 to 250 hours in a season because this is the only time when these machines are used in the whole year.

“If a machine is running for just 2, 3, 6, or 29 hours, what is the purpose of purchasing such machines then,” questioned a senior officer in the PPCB. There is a huge need to mobilise the cooperative societies at least to use the available machines to its maximum hour limit in their respective villages where a large number of small and marginal farmers are available who can be given such machines at a nominal rent for stubble management, he added.

In Punjab, Pathankot has 23 targeted societies under CRM which is the minimum number in the state, while Ludhiana has a maximum number of targeted societies with 347.

A senior officer in the Punjab Agriculture department revealed that they have been putting huge efforts to provide subsidised machines across the state to individual farmers, farm groups and cooperative societies, but the efforts of cooperative societies are abysmal as compared to the other groups owing such machines.

A senior officer in the Punjab Cooperative department on the condition of anonymity said that the machines remained under-utilised because several farmers and farm groups in every village own their personal machines, which they use on their land and fellow farmers’ land, and those who do not own such machines are mostly small and marginal farmers who said that they cannot afford even the rent of these machines because of which they remain under-utilised.

Bharti Kisan Union (BKU) Dakaunda general secretary said that cooperative societies are age-old established societies which have a close rapport with farmers and if government supports financially then the available machines at the cooperative societies can be utilised free of cost on the land of small and marginal farmers to stop the stubble burning.