12,900 Kurukshetra farmers to get Rs 11cr incentive for not burning stubble
Kurukshetra, February 10
The claims of over 12,900 farmers who had sought incentive for not burning paddy residue in the district have been approved by the District Level Committee, and the farmers will get over Rs 11.21 crore in this regard.
Reward Also for in-situ management
While earlier the incentive was for ex-situ management only in which bales were prepared, in the last season, the govt extended the incentive for in-situ management, too, in which the residue was mixed in the soil.
Sources said 14,782 paddy farmers had applied for incentive for not burning the residue and managing it through the in-situ and ex-situ management in around 1.35 lakh acres. The committee approved the claims of 12,941 farmers for not burning the residue on 1.21 lakh acres.
As per the Agriculture Department, of the total approved claims, 2,039 farmers have been provided the incentive money of around Rs 2 crore so far. The government has allotted Rs 5.5 crore, which will be used to settle the claims of around 6,400 farmers, while more budget has been sought to settle the claims of the remaining farmers.
Last year, the department had received claims for around 50,000 acres and it had given the incentive of around Rs 1.9 crore to farmers for not burning residue in over 18,000 acres after verification.
While earlier the incentive was for ex-situ management only in which bales were prepared, in the last season, the government extended the incentive for in-situ management, too, in which the residue was mixed in the soil.
Assistant agriculture engineer Kurukshetra, Rajesh Verma, said, “To motivate the farmers, the state government had announced to give an incentive of Rs 1,000 per acre admissible to in-situ and ex-situ management of the paddy crop residue. Earlier, only the land owner farmers used to get the incentive, but this time, the benefit has been extended to those farmers too who grow paddy crop after taking land on lease. As a large number of farmers take land on lease, the number of claims increased this year significantly. The incentive is being transferred directly into the farmers’ bank accounts through the direct benefit transfer (DBT).”
“In the last season, 300 cases of farm fires were reported against 538 incidents in 2021. In the last season, due to untimely rainfall, the harvesting got disturbed and later several farmers had burnt their residue to vacate the field, but it has been decided to hold a meeting with the baler owners in July itself to chalk out a plan a distribute areas among the baler operators so that the farmers could get their fields vacated on time. It will help in bringing the farm fire incidents further down,” he added.
