Ex-situ crop residue management
Also called: Ex-situ management, Ex situ CRM · Topic: Geographical Issues: Pollution, Urban Waste, Slums and Land Degradation · NCERT: Beyond NCERT
Meaning
Ex-situ crop residue management means taking crop residue out of the field and using it somewhere else. Crop residue is the straw and stubble left behind after a harvest. Machines called balers press the loose straw into bundles. Aggregators, the middlemen who collect straw from many small farms, then carry it to factories and power plants. There it becomes fuel, biomass pellets (small fuel pieces made from compressed crop waste) or raw material for industry. This matters because if farmers can sell their straw, they have less reason to burn it. Burning straw adds to winter smog in north India.
Example
In Punjab and Haryana, paddy straw is baled after the October–November harvest and sent to thermal power plants near Delhi. Plants within 300 km of the National Capital Region (NCR) must use paddy straw from Punjab, Haryana or the NCR for at least 50% of their biomass fuel. Coal plants in the NCR must co-fire at least 5% biomass pellets, which means burning the pellets together with coal.
Don't confuse with
- In-situ crop residue management: here the straw stays in the same field. It is mixed into the soil or broken down there, for example with a Happy Seeder machine or a bio-decomposer spray. Ex-situ management moves the straw off the farm.
- Stubble burning: this is setting fire to the residue in the field to clear it fast before wheat sowing. Both in-situ and ex-situ management are ways to avoid it.