 You're watching News Made Easy. I am Anandya Chakravarty. Stop blaming farmers for the pollution over Delhi because it's now clear that the winter pollution that we face in Delhi, only 4% of that comes from crop burning of farm fires. That is the data that has been presented to the Supreme Court by the government. Only 4% in winters and 7% in summer. But essentially our problem is usually in winter because of the climate over Delhi at that time where the smoke that comes in from farm fires, the pollution that comes in gets trapped, right? And we get a few days of terrible smog and it happens to be around that Diwali season. Alright, so it's possible that farm fires do contribute significantly to pollution on those few days but overall it is not a big pollutant at all. However, even for those few days it is actually possible for us to ensure that farmers do not burn crops, right? And how can that be done? To understand that, we have to understand why farmers burn the paddy stubble, right? Because what happens is that they have this very short window right before Diwali, about 21 and after Diwali, this period where they have about 2-3 weeks in which they have to harvest the standing paddy crop, the rice crop and then they have to sow the winter wheat crop, okay? And what they use in Punjab Harana because there's a significant amount of mechanization in these states they use combined harvesters to cut them. These machines when they cut the standing crop they cut it from slightly from the top, right? And they leave about 8-10 inches of stubble on the ground which has to be uprooted before the wheat crop can be sown. Now, farmers can either put in hard manual labour to uproot that stubble or they can use expensive machines to uproot the stubble or the third option which is what they do is they can burn it down, alright? Now, why do farmers not cut the stubble and use it? After all, stubble that straw could be used as fodder? Well, the problem is that the paddy grown in this region, right? The stubble that is left behind has a very high silica content and what that means is that it is not fit for consumption by cattle. So, cattle can't be fed that as fodder. So, that silica is absolute waste, that straw is waste. It cannot be sold for anything and lakhs of tons of this stubble is actually produced every year, left behind every year and it's a huge issue. Even storage or moving that from the farm and moving it to a storage house is a huge issue for farmers. So, it's a huge cost, okay? Some things that had been introduced is a thing called a happy cedar and there's another machine called the super cedar. Now, what they do is that they attach to the harvester and what they do is that when the harvester is cutting the crop, these basically uproot the straw, lay it on the ground itself and simultaneously they sow the wheat crop, okay? Now, what is it supposed to do? The straw lying on the ground is supposed to get essentially decompose over a period of time and provide nutrients to the ground and one of the things that the Punjab government said when it wanted to push happy cedars was this would lead to higher yields. Farmers found that that did not happen for two reasons. The happy cedar was unable to pick out tough straw, tough stubble. It was very difficult for the happy cedar to do that. It couldn't do that. That still had to be done manually and another thing is that for the crop when it, when the fodder, the stubble was laid onto the ground, it would take a very long time to decompose and for the first few years, farmers actually noticed that in the first two years after using it, their yield actually went down and it returned to the whatever they had before using happy fodder two, three years later. Most farmers say that they did not benefit from happy cedars and many say that even after using the happy cedar, they had to burn their crop. They had to burn the stubble because the happy cedar could not pick up a lot of the tough stubble. Now, that is why happy cedar is a problem. The second problem with happy cedar is that it costs a lot of money. Farmers get 50% subsidy from the government if they buy it individually and if they buy it as a group, it is an 80% subsidy, but even then it's an investment. And let us understand that farm incomes have been very low. The government's own reports tell us that farm incomes are very low. Even in Punjab and Haryana, on an average a farmer doesn't earn more than 18 to 25,000 in that range, average range per month, which is not a lot of money as you know, right? So our idea that the farmer is very rich and yet they're burning, that is not true, which is why farmers say we can get this cut, we can get it removed, just give us 200 rupees extra per quintal. That is all we need. 200 rupees per extra per quintal means 2 rupees extra per kilo, a cost that the government has to bear because this is a public good. If that money is given to farmers and farmers and given well before the paddy sowing season because it can't be that they are asked to cut off the straw using their own labor or putting in money and then they have to wait for many days to get the money back because they need that money in harvesting season to buy seed, fertilizers, various other things. So essentially it is this 200 rupee per quintal which is the key thing that farmers require. If they get that, then the problem of pollution caused by farm fires that few days, 3, 4, 5 days that has come that will disappear and that's a cost that the affluent have to bear so that the government can take taxes from affluent people and give it to farmers or the government has to borrow and give it to farmers. This is a health issue, it's a public good not just for people sitting in cities like Delhi or in other cities near Delhi which is Delhi NCR but also for the farmers themselves because they also do not want to face the health hazards of burning their crops. That's the show today. Keep watching NewsClick and do subscribe to us as well.