Farmers scheduling straw fires to duck detection

There seems to be no let-up in farm fire cases. As many parts of the region were still grappling with smoggy conditions and anxiously waiting for some improvement in air quality, many farmers were seen out in the fields setting paddy residue on fire post afternoon, dodging the satellite.

Bursting of firecrackers and spurt in farm fires have further deteriorated the air quality in the region, with the AQI level in Amritsar reaching 326, plunging the holy city into “very poor” category.

Jalandhar was not too far behind and it recorded an AQI of 273, followed by Ludhiana (243), Patiala (227), Khanna (219), Mandi Gobindgarh (213), Bathinda (187) and Rupnagar (152).

A number of farmers were seen setting crop residue on fire in their fields along the Sirhind-Patiala road after 3 pm.

The visible imaging radiometer suites installed on Suomi NPP and MODIS Aqua satellites, which capture farm fires, cross the region’s pathway during the afternoon and return well after midnight.

Dr Vinay Sehgal, Principal Scientist and Professor at the Division of Agricultural Physics at CREAMS Laboratory, Delhi, had earlier stated that farmers had come to know about the satellites’ timing and that was the reason for the spike in farm fires during evening hours. This has led to a decline in the number of such cases on the crop residue burning dashboard. Dr Hiren Jethva, a senior research scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre who is affiliated with Morgan State University, has written on his X handle that the dodging of satellite appeared to be a plot plucked out of Hindi blockbuster “Parmanu”, depicting how Indian scientists dodge American satellite to carry out the nuclear test.

Jethva has written on X: “Preliminary quantitative analysis of the GK2A-AMI, a satellite sensor’s 3.8-micron data, indicates that farm fire activity tends to peak in the late afternoon over the past three years.”

Meanwhile, the state witnessed 136 cases of stubble burning on Saturday, taking the total tally to 8,000.

Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann’s home district Sangrur reported maximum 50 cases today, followed by Ferozepur (30), Barnala (17 and Patiala (12).