Punjab to give 24,000 crop residue management machines for coming season

The Punjab Agriculture Department will provide 24,000 crop residue management machines in the coming harvesting season to check stubble burning incidents in the state, Agriculture Minister Gurmeet Singh Khudian said on Wednesday.

Khudian said the department has received as many as 1,58,394 applications from farmers to avail subsidy for Crop Residue Management (CRM) machinery.

He said the department will provide Super SMS, happy seeder, paddy straw chopper, mulcher, smart seeder, zero till drill, surface seeder, super seeder, crop reaper, shrub master for in-situ management (mixing crop residue in fields) and baler and straw rake for ex-situ management (using stubble as fuel) of the paddy residue.

During the last year, the state was able to reduce stubble-burning cases by 30 per cent, he said.

The department had prepared a Rs 350 crore action plan for providing CRM on subsidy for the 2023 Kharif season.

The applications for availing subsidy were invited via an online portal to ensure transparency and make the procedure easy to use for availing the subsidy.

In a statement, Khudian said the agriculture department has also been making concerted efforts to set up custom hiring centres at each block, wherein CRM machines would be made available for small and marginal farmers.

"The state government has been providing 80 per cent subsidy for the establishment of custom hiring centres on the purchase of CRM machines, while 50 per cent subsidy is being offered to individual farmers," he said.