Punjab aims to reduce stubble burning incidents by 50%: Min

Punjab Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare Minister Gurmeet Singh Khudian said on Wednesday that the government has set a target to bring down the crop residue burning to 50 per cent in the upcoming season.

He was addressing the one-day state level workshop-cum-training on ‘Space-based technology for monitoring stubble burning under Agro-geoinformatics’ organised by Punjab Remote Sensing Centre, Ludhiana at MGSIPA.

Gurmeet Singh Khudian said that pollution is a vast issue, and holding only farmers responsible for the same would not change anything on ground as they are also victims of uncontrolled pollution.

He further said that the Punjab government is trying hard to tackle the crop residue burning and in this regard, around 23,000 Crop Residue Management (CRM) machines are being provided to the state farmers on the subsidy during FY 2023-24. Due to the concerted efforts of the government, the stubble burning incidents have reduced to 36,623 in 2023 from 49,922 fire incidents in 2022, reflecting a positive change of 26 per cent.

Special Chief Secretary (Development), KAP Sinha said that the state government is mulling to launch the Crop Residue Management (CRM) campaign this year in advance to contain the fire incidents more effectively, besides encouraging the farmers to adopt the crop diversification to wean away them from two crops (wheat-paddy) cycle to address the problem of groundwater depletion.