Delhi’s toxic air fuelled by rice fields that India doesn’t need

Bloomberg

Each year India’s rice farmers burn the stubble of the harvested crop, contributing to an annual haze that damages the health of those in and around the capital. Yet the country is producing more rice than it needs thanks to government subsidies.
Guaranteed prices have encouraged farmers to grow so much rice — one of the most water-intensive crops and a major source of greenhouse gases — that India has become the world’s largest exporter of the grain and government stockpiles are now more than twice the required level.
“Farmers in Punjab and Haryana need to diversify from rice to other crops to save water and the environment,” said former Agriculture Secretary Siraj Hussain. The government should help them shift to crops that use less water, like soybeans, pulses and corn, compensating them for any loss in earnings “for two or three years,” said Hussain, a visiting senior fellow at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations in New Delhi.
India exports more than 11 million tons of rice annually, and has about 25 million tons of rice and about 4 million tons of unmilled grain in buffer stocks, enough to feed the nation for more than three months. The government requirement is for 10.3 million tons in reserves on October 1.
But farmers in northwest India prefer to grow rice and wheat because the government buys the grains at guaranteed prices so it can sell the food at subsidised rates to the poor. The government expects to spend 1.51 trillion rupees ($21 billion) on food subsidies in 2019-20.
Farmers have been taking the blame for the capital’s terrible air quality in recent days even though vehicle and industrial emissions contribute year-round, as does road and construction dust and domestic fires lit by the poor.
“Everyone blames farmers for pollution,” said Harjinder Singh, 40, who grows rice and wheat on 4 acres he rents in the village of Sher Majra in Punjab state. “What about the factories that emit poisonous gases all year round?” he said, indicating a plant next to his field that turns plastic waste into furnace oil.
But it’s the extra wallop from burning crop stubble that causes the annual slump in Delhi’s air quality, despite the fact that the practice is banned in the surrounding states of Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan. In the trough-like topography of north India, the smoke lingers in the colder months.