NEW DELHI: Delhi environment minister Gopal Rai visited the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) on Tuesday and unveiled the new powder form of the bio-decomposer to be used as a quicker solution to the management of harvest stubble.
Rai said the new powder would be put on trial on 1,000 acres in Delhi, while the conventional liquid form of the decomposer, which takes a few days for its preliminary preparation, will be sprayed free of cost on over 5,000 acres of cultivation land. Both the products take around the same time - from 25 to 30 days, according to farmers - to decompose remnant stalks. Rai said so far 957 farmers had filled the form to apply bio-decomposer spraying in Delhi.
Relying on the Pusa bio-decomposer to manage stubble in the capital, the minister said there were talks being held counterparts in Punjab to manage stubble in a similar manner there. " We have formed 21 teams in Delhi for the purpose, which will include officials of the agriculture and revenue departments," the minister said.
The cost of 10 litres of the liquid decomposer, which has to be mixed with 200 litres of water for spraying over an acre, is around Rs 750. Delhi government currently bears this cost.
Mindful of the time taken for the decomposers to break down the harvest remnants, Rai said, "We know the interval between the harvesting of the rice crops and the sowing of wheat is very short. The government has started the spraying in time so that there is no delay and farmers can get better results."
The minister added that while Delhi will try to manage emission from local sources through the winter, NCR towns will also have to come up with a compliant winter action plan to control the pollution.
Divisional Commissioner KR Meena held a meeting with district magistrates, additional DMs and SDMs of all districts on Monday to discuss the decomposer spraying. Since the revenue officials maintain a regular contact with the farmers, they have been tasked with the responsibility of reaching out to them. "Our teams will contact the farmers and prepare a village-wise schedule to ensure that all agricultural plots in a particular area are covered the same day," said a revenue department official.
The spraying is likely to begin in the first week of October. It will take around 15 days to cover all the farms and the exercise will be completed much before Diwali, said an official. A revenue department official said, "The bio-decomposer can only be sprayed when the soil still retains moisture. Once the upper layer of the soil dries up, the solution will not mix with the stubble properly. The villagers are being asked to share the tentative dates when they will be harvesting the paddy crop to help the government teams schedule the spraying of bio-decomposer."