STOP STUBBLE BURNING: 32 YEARS OLD COMPUTER GRADUATE HAS NOT BURNT PADDY STUBBLE FOR 4 YEARS

SAVES RS 1.55 LACS ON EIGHT ACRES OF LAND ANNUALLYUSES FARM MACHINERY ONLY ON SHARING BASIS

Mansa, Oct 23

            32 years old Sukhjit , a computer graduate from Panjab University Chandigarh owing 8 acres of land in village Beeroke Kalan, has not put paddy stubble on fire in his fields for the past four years. This time it would be his fifth year in row wherein he will opt for direct sowing of wheat into the paddy stubble and save upto Rs 1.55 lacs.

            Four years ago, after his brother's newborn son was diagnosed of suffering from congenital disorder, doctors at the PGI Chandigarh told the family that it may be due to increased use of farm chemicals. "We decided not to use any chemical for farming and starting with saying no to stubble burning was our first step," he says.

            Earlier, while Sukhjit spent Rs 1.80 lacs annually on the wheat and paddy cultivation, he input cost has drastically reduced and now he spends only Rs 25000 annually on both the crops. Besides saving monetarily, the fertility of his soil has improved to such an extent that even a child can easily dig his fields as compared to the hard soil surface one sees in the fields where stubble is put on fire. He is expecting around 24 quintal per acre Basmati 1509 of yield this year as compared to 16 to 19 quintals per acre for the same variety.

He also uses the bed plantation technique (without puddling) for sowing paddy on ridges.  Similarly, in wheat sowing he uses SRI technique wherein he uses 5 kilo seeds in one acre of land on the ridges. He doesn’t use any additional fertilizers for the crops and rather resorts to indigenous ways of farming to fight against any of the plant infections. He adds that the result of sowing on ridges both wheat and paddy crop are excellent as the crop germinates earlier, requires lesser water and almost no fertilizers and has higher yield. Ridges also allow him to use multi cropping system and increase his income.

Sukhjit does not owe any expensive agriculture implement such as Happy Seeder. Rather he uses it on sharing basis with the farmer cooperative societies thereby reducing his agriculture input and saves money.

Besides conventional wheat and paddy, by the start of May he cultivates corn (60 to75 days crop) and moong (55 days crop) together. He sells corn at Rs 23000 to Rs 24000 per acre for usage as silage, known as achaar amongst dairy farmers, (used for making feed for milk yielding animals) and Rs 35000 to Rs 40000 after drying it (used for grinding into corn flour and as feed for poultry).