Engineering Interventions to Mitigate the Agricultural Waste in India

Abstract

India produces more than 620 million tons of agricultural waste annually. Out of that only 25–30% is utilized as livestock fodder and energy production and the remainder is waste. For next crop sowing, most of the farmers practice incinera tion to clean the felds in the rice-wheat crop system and others. This practice releases harmful gases like CO2, CH4, N2O, H2S, O3, and smog, which cause air pollution. It also affects public life and disturbs soil physical, biological, and chemi cal properties by destroying benefcial soil microorganisms. Along with crop pro duction, other enterprises like dairy, fshery, poultry, agro-forestry, goat, and sheep rearing produces huge agricultural waste like crop residues, cow dung, and so on. Therefore, engineering interventions to mitigate the agricultural waste in India can be an option to solve the above problems and also provide better inputs to crop productivity.