Centre allots Rs 600 crore to state govts for paddy straw management

The Centre has allocated Rs 600 crore to states for handling of paddy straws that includes it’s new initiative on ex-situ supply chain management ahead of the stubble burning season this year, senior officials said on Friday.

Of this, around Rs 105 crore has already been released to Punjab, which records the highest incidents of stubble burning, while Rs 90 crore has been allocated for Haryana. So far, officials said the government usually used to allocate funds for subsidising machines used for in-situ management of paddy straws such as happy-seeders and super-seeders to prevent incidents of stubble burning. However, from this year, it has changed the guidelines of the scheme on Crop Residue Management (CRM) to include subsidy for ex-situ management of paddy straws as well. 

Broadly, in-situ management means where the cut straws are buried or treated into the field itself through use of machines such as happy-seeders and super-seeders, while ex-situ management is when the straws are processed and used outside the field in a sustainable manner. Meanwhile, officials said the subsidy will be provided for paddy straw supply chain under a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model encouraging industries to participate. 

“We are hopeful that there would be substantial reduction in incidents of stubble burning this year due to both in-situ and ex-situ interventions of the government,” S Rukmani, joint secretary, Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare told a select group of reporters on the sidelines of a CII Workshop on Clean and Green Solutions for Rice Straw Management.

S Sivakumar, Chairman of CII National Agriculture Council and Group Head of Agri and IT Business at ITC said that there are a host of government schemes for ex-situ management of paddy straws and efforts of CII is to increase awareness about them across the value chain.

India produces around 25 million tonnes of paddy straws which can be a source of income for farmers, while at the same time providing raw materials for industry to produce fuel.

As per an official statement issued a few months back, the Central government under the new revised guidelines for ex-situ management of paddy straws supply chain will provide financial assistance at the rate of 65 per cent on the capital cost of machinery costing up to Rs 1.50 crores. 

Industry as primary promoter of the project has to contribute 25 per cent of the project cost and the balance 10 per cent will be the contribution of beneficiary or aggregator of paddy straws that can be anyone either a farmer, rural entrepreneurs, cooperative societies of farmers or Farmers Producer Organizations (FPOs) and even Panchayats.

This Central subsidy will be granted for purchasing of machines needed for ex-situ management of paddy straws such as balers, or even combined machines that cut, collect and bale the paddy straws for use as raw material in industries.

Absence of proper baling facility for paddy straws has been a long pending problem for industries that use these straws either for generating power or converting them into biomass.

The revised guidelines also state that during the next three years 1.5 million metric tonnes of surplus paddy straw is expected to be collected through this initiative. “

“Assuming a collection capacity of each project as 4500 tonnes a year, it has been estimated that a total 333 projects will have to be established to collect 1.5 million metric tons of paddy straw,” the statement has then said.