Punjab farmers show how to turn agri waste into bioenergy

Farmers like Amolak Singh in the farm rich state of Punjab are making money and also helping clean the air in cities like Chandigarh and Delhi by selling agricultural waste to generate bioenergy.

Updated on: Aug 26, 2015, 13:15:49 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

Farmers like Amolak Singh in the farm rich state of Punjab are making money and also helping clean the air in cities like Chandigarh and Delhi by selling agricultural waste to generate bioenergy.

Every year in November, farmers in Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan burn agricultural waste which leads to rise in air pollution levels in the national capital and neighbouring cities, home for over 2.5 crore people.

Things have changed as Amolak and other farmers like him are now selling the waste to Sukhbir Agro, a subsidiary of a company owning rice mills in the region, at a mutually negotiated price. “No one believed the company representatives when they came about three years ago proposing to buy green waste lying in our fields,” says Amolak, whose family owns huge tracks of paddy fields in the Muktsar region of Punjab. There is not a single home in his village that does not sell paddy straw to the collection centre set up by the company a few kilometres away. “I get paid by the same company for both rice as well as the waste,” an elated Amolak said, adding that the waste now generates enough money to partially pay for his annual farm labour cost.

It was easier for Sukhbir Singh to set up one of Punjab’s first agri-based biomass plants as his family owned rice mills in the region, thereby providing a ready infrastructure to collect waste — the biggest hurdle in setting up these plants.

The company added to its 40 existing paddy centres to collect straw after the harvesting season and it provided them with the network to collect agriculture waste from Muktsar, Bathinda, Mansa districts and even from the neighbouring states.

Sukhbir said: “As the quality of paddy straw is good, its power load factor (efficiency) is about 80%, almost the same as that of thermal power and way above that of solar photovoltaic which ranges between 13% and 18%. It also means a good return for the investment.” The waste collected is enough for the company’s biomass plant to generate green electricity, he said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

Home/Cities/Chandigarh News/Punjab Farmers Show How To Turn Agri Waste Into Bioenergy