Attach super SMS with self-propelled combine harvesters: PPCB to owners

PATIALA:In order to curb the menace of stubble burning during post harvesting season in the state, the Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB) has urged all owners to ensure the attachment of Super Straw Management System (SMS) with their self-propelled combine harvesters with a view of ensuring that the leftover paddy straw coming out of harvesters during harvesting operation is cut into pieces and spread in the field to enable the farmers in better management of paddy straw/stubble.

Gagan K Teja

Tribune News Service

Patiala, July 20

In order to curb the menace of stubble burning during post harvesting season in the state, the Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB) has urged all owners to ensure the attachment of Super Straw Management System (SMS) with their self-propelled combine harvesters with a view of ensuring that the leftover paddy straw coming out of harvesters during harvesting operation is cut into pieces and spread in the field to enable the farmers in better management of paddy straw/stubble.

Kahan Singh Pannu, chairman of the Punjab Pollution Control Board, said the PPCB observed that indiscriminate burning of paddy straw in the open fields after the harvesting of crops was causing air pollution, resulting in various kinds of environmental and health hazards.

He informed that in order to curb this menace, the Government of Punjab, Department of Science, Technology and Environment has issued notification in 2013 under the provisions of Section 19 (5) of the Air (Prevention & Control of Pollution) Act, 1981, thereby prohibiting the indiscriminate burning of paddy and wheat straw in Punjab.

The Central Government in the Ministry of Agriculture, Department of Agriculture and Cooperation, has made the national policy for Management of Crop Residues 2014 which envisages promotion of technologies of optimum utilisation and in-situ management of crop residue.

Moreover, the Principal Bench of the National Green Tribunal, New Delhi, had disposed off application on the subject of stubble burning, prohibiting the agricultural residue burning in any part of the NCT of Delhi, Rajasthan, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana.

“To put an end to this problem, the Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, has recommended that super SMS be attached to self-propelled combine harvesters, which cuts the paddy straw coming out of harvester combine into small pieces as well as spreads the same. We have instructed all the owners to follow this to curb this menace,” he added.