A report on Crop Residue Management in South Asia: Advancing Subregional Cooperation for Sustainable, Climate-smart and Integrated Management of Crop Residues presented by Dr. C R Mehta (Director & PC, AICRP on FIM, ICAR-CIAE, Bhopal) at ESCAP Subregional Office for South and South-West Asia (SSWA), New Delhi, India on 15 September 2022
Rice constituted 90% of crop residue produced in Bangladesh, while wheat residue constituted 45% of Pakistan’s total crop residue production. The main factors influencing farmers decisions to burn crop residues include the short time interval (10‐20 days) for sowing the next crop (particularly in rice‐wheat cropping systems), the introduction of combine harvesters which leave long straw and lack of straw management machinery, labour scarcity and high cost of collection and storage, lack of alternative uses and profitability of alternate options, lack of awareness about the negative effects of burning and low level of knowledge about CRM machinery. All these factors lead farmers to burn crop residue as it is the easiest and cheapest way to dispose of them.
It was stressed that there is a need to have a combination of technologies and incentives to address the issue and that the key was to assign a real economic and commercial value to crop residue in order to make burning an economic loss to the farmers.