Companies turn burning problem into biz by using stubble

NEW DELHI: Punjab has 75 lakh acres of land under paddy cultivation. Every October after the harvest, these vast fields are left with crop residue, also known as stubble or straw, which farmers usually burn to prepare their fields for the wheat crop. The smoke ends up choking Delhi and other parts of north India. But now some firms are not only turning crop waste into money but also saving lungs in the process.

Farm2Energy Pvt Ltd, a three-year-old business based in Ludhiana’s Bija village, is run by two farmer brothers, Sukhbir and Kamljeet Singh. Its balers and tractors scoop up the stubble, roll it into bales and sell it to neighbouring sugar, cement and oil factories as well as power plants who burn these in a controlled environment to fire boilers.

At the Bio-lutions factory in Ramnagara, Bengaluru, eight machines convert three tonnes of paddy straw from Punjab into pulp every day. The pulp is then used to manufacture sustainable tableware and packaging material.


‘Straw biz yielding operating profit’

Nitin Jain, chief financial officer of Farm2Energy, says, “Since we started in 2016, we have cleared straw from 20,000 acres of farmland in Punjab. “We also make biocoal from crop stubble and plan to monetise it from the next financial year.”

The stubble business is already showing an operating profit, says the CFO.

Three tonnes of straw processed in the Bengaluru factory is just a fraction of the rice straw generated in Punjab but it’s a beginning, says Kurian Mathew, CEO, Bio-lutions India. The company produces plates, bowls, trays to pack vegetables in supermarkets and kidney trays used in hospitals.

In Delhi, a bunch of engineers and scientists have floated a company to tackle the issue. Operating from the IIT campus, Kriya Labs is running a pilot unit which breaks down agricultural residue to pulp, which can be used to make tableware. Ankur Kumar, CEO, Kriya Labs says, “We purchased 500kg of paddy straw at Rs 5/kg, and our current facility can produce 50kg of pulp a day”. If these firms succeed commercially, it will mean relief for residents of North India who have to deal with respiratory disorders. A study by the USbased International Food Policy Research Institute and partner institutes has estimated that the health and economic costs of crop burning in northern India amount to over $30 billion annually.