Leftover stalks are a headache for farmers
Print Edition
Farmer Wang Qiang is pleased with his harvest of beans, but the 250,000 kilograms of leftover stalks are a worry.
Wang, 39, is a farmer from Bei’an in northeast Heilongjiang Province, a leading grain-producing area. He farms 80 hectares of land and mainly grows beans.
“The government will not allow me to burn the stalks, but if I don’t, it is impossible for me to clear the field and plant next year,” he said.
The government has banned the burning of stalks after harvest to prevent air pollution.
Since the harvest season began last month in Heilongjiang, eight smog warnings have been issued. Smoke from many fields is so visible that it is easy to lose count of the number of blazes.
From October 30 to last Sunday, satellite data from the Ministry of Environmental Protection showed 1,336 stalk-burning points, an increase of 281 from the previous week.
About 94 percent of the burning points are in the northeast provinces of Heilongjiang, Liaoning and Jilin, and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
The satellites only detect major blazes, and there are many more burning points than the figures show.
In some areas, farmers wait until night falls to start burning stalks.
Chinese farmers used to manually rake and shovel the stalks into piles after harvest, but now no one needs them and there are fewer hands to undertake the labor-intensive task.
“Ten years back, stalks were used for cooking, feeding livestock and fueling methane tanks. But now we use electricity for cooking, and have replaced stalks with corn as fodder,” said Wang Qiang.
About 170 million tons of corn stalks are produced every year in the three provinces, and only half of them are collected and recycled.
Farmers earn 3,000 yuan (US$452) from 1 hectare of corn, but there are close to 10,000 kilograms of leftovers. “It is simply too costly to collect them from the fields,” said Cao Shuwen, a farmer in Heilongjiang.
Jiao Jiang, former chief expert at the provincial academy of agriculture, said: “We need to develop downstream industries to consume large quantities of crop stalks. Currently, there are simply not enough incentives for farmers.
“The government needs to provide subsidies for mechanical collection and shredding and help lower the cost of recycling.”
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