[H-CG28] Air Pollution and Health Effects of Agricultural Residue Burning and Pathways to Solutions

[HCG28-02] Mitigation factors to reduce straw burining and greenhouse gas productions by sustainable soil management in Northwest India

★Invited Papers

*Kazuyuki INUBUSHI¹, Shigeto SUDO², Eiji NISHIHARA³, Rumiko MURAO⁴, Mohan CHANDRA⁵, Kamal VATTA⁶, Sachiko Hayashida^4,7 (1.Chiba University, 2.Research Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences-NARO, 3.Tottori University, 4.Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, 5.Lovely Professional University, 6.Punjab Agricultural University, 7.Nara Women’s University)

Keywords:Greenhouse gases, Soil fertility, Straw burning, Sustainable management

Soil is supporting sustainable food production with water, climate and nutrients in long-term. Rice-wheat cropping system in Northwest India has been established since green revolution, based on modern varieties and sufficient water and nutrients. However due to decrease of water availability and intensive continuos cropping, soil fertility and soil organic matter contents started to decline (Padre et al. 2007, Fig. 1) and miss-managements of crop residues induce environmental problems such as air pollution. We have initiated India-Japan collaborative research project named Aakash to study sustainable straw management to reduce air pollution, such as assessing alternative crops rather than rice or wheat, smart straw managements including minimum tillage and biochar, monitoring straw burning by satellite and human health conditions by small sensors and questionnaires. In the international research project, there are 3 working groups (WG) and WG1 will examine 1) the effect of incentives aimed at promoting behavioral changes in farmers from socioeconomic view point and 2) the various alternatives to burning straw from agronomic viewpoint. As for mitigation to reduce greenhouse gases from paddy soil, crop residue should be managed properly, such as biochar shown in south India (Senari et al. 2020, Fig. 2), influencing by soil conditions and physico-chemical and biological properties (Hanazawa et al. 2015). We need further investigation to reduce straw burning for sustainable agriculture and healthy life.
Acknowledgement: This study is supported by RIHN [Research Institute for Humanity and Nature; Aakash (An interdisciplinary study towards clean air, public health and sustainable agriculture) Project].
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