CORRECTION: Punjab farmers switch from burning to baling crop stubble as Delhi reels from pollution

Record ID: 2277479

  • Title: CORRECTION: Punjab farmers switch from burning to baling crop stubble as Delhi reels from pollution
  • Date: 14th November 2025
  • Summary: SANGRUR, PUNJAB, INDIA (NOVEMBER 13, 2025) (REUTERS) (MUTE) VARIOUS DRONE SHOTS SHOWING TRACTOR RAKING CROP RESIDUE VARIOUS OF TRACTOR RAKING CROP RESIDUE VARIOUS OF BALES OF CROP RESIDUE BEING PUSHED OUT OF MACHINE WORKER LOADING BALES OF CROP RESIDUE ONTO CART PULLED BY TRACTOR (SOUNDBITE) (Punjabi) 25-YEAR-OLD FARMER, DALBIR SINGH, SAYING: “Due to stubble burning, we
  • Embargoed:
  • Keywords: CII Foundation Confederation of Indian industry India New Delhi Patiala Punjab Sangrur air pollution bailer cardboard environment farm fires farmers haze smog smoke stubble burning toxic air
  • Location: SANGRUR AND PATIALA, PUNJAB, INDIA
  • City: SANGRUR AND PATIALA, PUNJAB, INDIA
  • Country: India
  • Topics: Asia / Pacific,Climate Adaptation and Solution,Climate Change,Environment,General News,Editors' Choice
  • Reuters ID: LVA001197314112025RP1
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: After years of post-harvest fires choking the air, many farmers in Punjab are abandoning the practice of burning crop stubble for cleaner alternatives.
    The annual ritual of setting fire to paddy straw – a major contributor to toxic winter smog in northern India – is being replaced by tractor-drawn machines that rake and bale the residue.
    Farmers in Balwar Kalan village of Sangrur district are using tractors to sweep the golden straw into rows, while workers stack heavy bales onto trailers for transport.
    Instead of sending smoke into the sky, they are now sending compressed straw to factories – a far greener solution to the stubble problem.
    “Due to stubble burning, we are exposed to smoke… it’s not an exciting activity for us, that’s why we are stocking it and sending it to boilers to be sold. This is beneficial for the farmers and us as well," Dalbir Singh, a 25-year-old farmer told Reuters.
    Traditionally, stubble burning has been the quickest way for Punjab's farmers to clear fields between rice and wheat seasons, but it comes at a high environmental cost.
    The fires emit harmful smoke and have been illegal since 2015 due to their impact on regional air quality.
    This week New Delhi's air quality index has hovered around 400, ranking in the "severe" category, prompting authorities to step up curbs on construction and industrial activity.
    In the past authorities have blamed much of the smog shrouding the city every winter on smoke from farmers illegally burning crop stubble to clear their fields in the neighbouring breadbasket states of Punjab and Haryana.
    Now, cleaner alternatives are catching on. Farmers are deploying rake machines to gather the leftover straw and balers to compress it into tidy bales instead of torching it.
    A baler is a tractor-towed machine that collects stubble from the field and turns it into bales, allowing easy removal of the crop residue.
    On the ground, the transition isn't without its challenges.
    Using balers and rakes incurs costs that small farmers find daunting and the shift from open fires to balers is being bolstered by collaboration between farmers, industry, and government.
    Country's leading industry body, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) foundation which runs a public-private Crop Residue Management program, has partnered with over 1,000 villages, providing resources, machinery and guidance to farmers to help them tide over to a cleaner and profitable way of disposing their farm waste.
    The CII Foundation's initiative, launched in 2018, has brought together government agencies, agricultural experts, and companies to promote alternatives to burning, by raising awareness and providing machinery and training to the farmers.
    Jai Vikram Bakshi, advisor with the CII foundation said the partnership was showing very encouraging results.
    “We are partnering with corporates to get the right amount of CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) funding, being available for them, so that they can experience a different kind of better profitable way of doing the same thing and also not pollute the environment,” Bakshi said.
    For some Punjab farmers, the switch to baling has opened up new income streams as well as environmental relief.
    Many of the enterprising farmers and businessmen in Punjab have set up factories to process farm biomass into biogas, bio-fertiliser and fuel pallets.
    According to the CII foundation, these interventions kept over 2 million tonnes of straw from being burned in 2024, drastically cutting pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
    Industry players are increasingly stepping up to absorb the surplus straw.
    Gurnaib Singh, a 53-year-old farmer from Phagguwara village of Sangrur, set up a factory to make cardboard from waste stubble and says he is not only helping keep the air clean, but also providing employment to dozens at his plant.
    His cardboard unit collects straw from farmers in several villages; as a result, nearly every farmer in his area now provides paddy straw to the factory instead of burning it. He uses a baler to bundle the straw before it is processed into pulp, effectively creating a local recycle loop for crop residue.
    “We make these cardboards (out of stubble) to prevent pollution. Generally, burning crop residue causes pollution, however, through these practices, by making products (out of stubble) we are preventing pollution and toxic air from spreading. That’s why we make these cardboard,” Singh said, standing in front of stacks of stubble bales.
    With roughly 18–20 million tonnes of paddy straw produced in Punjab each year such measures aim to turn what was once an environmental liability into an economic asset, CII’s Bakshi said.
    (Production: Sunil Kataria and Bhushan Kumar)
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