Delhi pollution: Paddy most profitable crop; farmers reluctant to shift

Paddy or rice, a water-guzzling crop partly responsible for heavy winter pollution in northern India, continues to be the most subsidised and profitable crop, which has thwarted a shift to alternatives such as pulses and maize, experts have said.
An effective solution will have to come from multi-pronged steps, including sufficient incentives, leading to large-scale crop diversification, experts said.
Analysts say satellite monitoring and imposition of fines, known environmental compensation, are not preventive or agricultural solutions and these have not been effective in stopping pollution-causing paddy-residue fires.
Another issue scuttling alternatives to stubble burning is the absence of an efficient supply chain and market for the commercial use of paddy leftovers.
Effective utilisation of straw requires supply of straw from farmers, robust infrastructure for storing and transporting stubble to end-users and established markets to facilitate transactions between farmers and buyers, said Udhaya Kumar of the Centre for Study of Science, Technology and Policy. Kumar and his colleagues published a report in August analysing the market for stubble.
In 2021-22, the profit margin for paddy towered over most summer crops, with differences ranging from ₹66,663 a hectare for maize and ₹11,462 for moong (green gram) in Punjab to ₹68,849 per hectare for bajra (pearl millet) and ₹36,295 for cotton in Haryana, according to calculations by Ashok Gulati, an agricultural economist.
Since subsidies are heavily skewed towards rice, it will be “difficult” to push dedicated paddy farmers towards other crops unless “agricultural subsidies are re-purposed”, said Gulati of the New Delhi-based think-tank, the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, states.
In an earlier era, paddy was harvested manually, which meant farmers would cut the whole plant. They now use mechanized harvesters, which cut the grain, leaving behind the straw. The cheapest way to eliminate the stubble is to burn them.
Delhi’s toxic winter smog triggered by fires to clear paddy residue has also been intensified by the Punjab Subsoil Water Act, 2009, designed to conserve groundwater by delaying paddy sowing.
The law mandates that farmers sow paddy only when the monsoon arrives over northern India. This has pushed back harvesting to coincide with a period, around mid-November, when wind speed usually stalls in northern states. Lack of strong winds prevents the disbursal of smog, helping it to blanket Delhi for days.
The combined subsidies for paddy from the Centre and the state government in Punjab for power, seeds, fertilizer and irrigation amounted to a staggering ₹38,973 per hectare during 2023-24, the highest for any crop, according to ICRIER’s calculations.
Not all crops get the same benefits of subsidies. In 2021-22, cultivators in Punjab and Haryana used more fertilizers on paddy than other crops, suggesting that a substantial portion of the fertilizer subsidy is funnelled into paddy, according to Gulati’s study.
Farmers prefer paddy also because of a guaranteed minimum support price (MSP), a floor rate, which makes it a high-income crop
The government buys out paddy and wheat at MSP rates. “This assurance is absent for other crops, leaving them vulnerable to the whims of the market,” economist Gulati said, adding paddy subsidies needn’t be eliminated but repurposed.
India is a major exporter of rice, which makes up for over 40% of global shipments. In 2021-22, the country exported nearly 22 million tonne of the grain, about a sixth of its total output. The country had banned exports of the grain in August 2023 to cool rising cereal inflation, which was lifted in October this year.