-Firstpost.com Ludhiana: North India’s smog problem — a cause of much tension between states — seems to have left politicians, farmers and even experts stumped. In Punjab, the government’s measures to tackle stubble-burning have reaped little dividend, as the farmers, many of them debt-ridden, say that at the end of the harvesting season, they are still left with no option but to set Paddy straw on fire in order to clear their...

-The Times of India In the next few days, India’s northern region, especially Delhi, is again likely to become among the most polluted places on earth because a vast number of farmers in Punjab and Haryana have decided to continue their annual ritual of setting fire to Paddy straw. This has brought back the spectre of smog choking the region despite the Centre doling out more than Rs 1,000 crore to the...

-The Indian Express But it may give a boost for S-SMS/Happy Seeder technology adoption to prevent Paddy straw burning Jalandhar: Thakur Dyal Singh has never in the past raised the rates for operation of his combine harvester in farmers’ fields by more than Rs 100 per acre. Till around 2012-13, he was charging Rs 800-1,000 for harvesting, threshing and cleaning their paddy or wheat crop from one acre using his machine. In...

-Economic and Political Weekly Are the ongoing debates on solutions to crop residue burning marred by policy confusion? While bio-compressed natural gas and ethanol producers want farmers to collect Paddy straw from their farms to be supplied to plant locations, another lobby of machine sellers wants the straw to be processed in the fields itself. Would the success of one commercial proposition lead to the failure of the other? Please click here...

-TheSundayGuardianLive.com Delhi’s problem of being covered by smoke started right after the Punjab Preservation of Subsoil Water Act in 2009, which delayed the burning of crops till late October, was implemented for the first time. Until a few years ago, when farmers in Punjab burnt the remnants of the rice crops in their fields in preparation for sowing wheat, the smoke from such fires was confined to Punjab. Back then, farmers burnt...