Why are farmers keen on "straw burning"?

Recently, I saw the news saying that "the mayor is responsible for smoking, the prisoners are concentrated on education, and all places are making extraordinary moves to control straw burning." I feel helpless. The "battle" horn for banning straw burning has been sounded everywhere, but almost all of them are directed at farmers and grassroots cadres. However, it is biased to completely blame smog on straw burning, and it is even more inappropriate to regard straw burning as the "sin" of farmers!

The author's hometown is located in the North China Plain, where it suffers from straw burning. Every summer and autumn harvest, every evening, smoke billows everywhere, even ten meters away from people can not be seen, mouth, nose and throat are also torn by this fireworks, breathing is difficult, eyes are also smoked pain. Twice a year, and in some places a third wave, every year. Every time it comes to this season, the news hates this act of burning straw, and at the same time the propaganda on the harm of burning straw is overwhelming. Coupled with the widespread concern about air quality problems in recent years, this kind of air pollution behavior, which can instantly suffocate people, has made public opinion even more critical. In order to quell public anger, grass-roots governments have also made great efforts to rectify it. Every summer and autumn harvest season, the township should send out all the cadres who can be sent out, guard the fields every day, and prohibit the villagers from burning straw. At the same time, the village committee will also be required to inform the villagers to ban straw burning, violators will be severely punished, how much will be fined, and so on, but also organize people to go to the fields to strictly guard against death. In addition, banners such as "straw returning to the field, benefiting the country and the people" and "burning straw shameful, using straw glorious" will be hung on both sides of the road. But no matter how much propaganda, how severe measures, how big the array, there is not much use. During the day, the villagers would light a fire together at night. The wind was high and the moon was dark. The fire was easy to spread, but it was not easy for people to be caught. The guards also opened their eyes and closed their eyes. After all, they were all villagers in the village. No one would offend anyone for this ban. Moreover, their own straw is also waiting to burn…or village cadres and other higher-ups after the storm, and the villagers have been harvested, quietly put a fire, burn all the burning, of course, including their own home. There's nothing the county can do about it. Therefore, this matter has become an endless loop. The government emphasizes year after year, the media reports year after year, and the common people have not fallen behind once.

Suffering from burning straw smoke, most people must wonder why villagers must burn straw? Isn't it good to return straw to the field and process feed? Aren't villagers the first victims of air pollution caused by straw burning? In fact, if you don't understand the background of straw becoming a problem, don't know the trouble of straw returning to the field, don't know the trouble that straw brings to farming, it is difficult to understand why villagers choose this kind of "self-defeating" treatment method. The author grew up in the countryside since childhood and knows well the pain of farmers having to burn straw. Today, I will say something fair for the villagers.

First of all, straw has become a problem that has only appeared in the past 10 or 20 years. After careful study, this is one of the by-products of agricultural mechanization. Twenty years ago, farmers had never used combine harvesters. When harvesting wheat, they bent down with sickles and tied the ripe wheat into bundles. Then they pulled them to the threshing ground with motor vehicles or ox carts and crushed them with stone rollers. After the wheat fell off, the straw was picked into a pile, and then they were winnowed, bagged, dried and transported home. This is a very traditional way of harvesting. Later there was a threshing machine, but it was also necessary to pull the wheat into the yard after harvest. Rice is similar, but the way of crushing is not good. Generally, threshing machines are set up in the yard to move the rice from the ears. Corn harvest method is relatively easy, is to break the corn cob into bags and transport home, and then to put down the straw, back home to feed animals. This harvest process was very long. It usually took at least half a month to complete the harvest. In the meantime, he had to pray for good weather, otherwise the grain of this season would probably rot in the fields or threshing grounds. And this process is too laborious, just a few consecutive days of bending over the harvest, let alone the rest of the series of heavy physical labor.

Fifteen years ago, the countryside began to harvest wheat on a large scale with combine harvesters. This mechanized operation allowed villagers to transport clean wheat bags home within an hour, saving half a month or even a month of trouble and hardship, and reducing the fear of the weather for half a month. However, this method caused a big problem, that is, where the combine harvester passed, except for the intact wheat grains, almost all the wheat stalks were broken and scattered everywhere, and this broken straw was useless to most villagers. In addition, it was very difficult to gather them and pull them out of the field, so the villagers had to burn them. The ashes could also fertilize the land. Corn began to be mechanized on a large scale ten years ago, and the problem with this method is still that, except for the corn cob, the straw is ground into powder after harvest. Eight years ago, it was rice's turn, and the problem was the same.

Second, why do villagers hate "straw returning to the field"? The legendary straw returning to the field is a very environmentally friendly and fertile way of treating the land, but the villagers have complained about it after trying it, so that no one is willing to do it later. What's the problem? The way to return straw to the field is nothing more than to break it up and bury it deeply with machines. However, this process requires villagers to spend money to deal with, generally tens of dollars per mu of land, basically the same price of mechanized farming, which undoubtedly increases the burden of farming, not as simple and pleasant as burning it. However, this is not the most important thing. The main problem is that if you want to plant rice in the second season after harvesting wheat in summer, although the broken straw has been deeply buried, as soon as the water is released in the field during transplanting, these straws will float up and form a thick layer on the water surface, generally a few centimeters to more than ten centimeters thick, and the weight of the straw saturated with water will increase exponentially. This has caused two difficulties for rice planting: one is that it is difficult to insert seedlings into the soil if straw piles are encountered during transplanting, and even if they are inserted, they will easily float because of shallow roots, resulting in large-scale die-off of rice; Second, floating straw will be blown back and forth on the water surface by the wind. Because of their heavy weight, they will press the seedlings planted with great difficulty under their bodies, so that they cannot be exposed to the water surface and see the sun, and soon they will rot into mud. After harvesting rice and corn in autumn, winter wheat will be planted. What will happen if straw is returned to the field at this time? Because a lot of deeply buried straw will not rot immediately, and it is not evenly buried in the ground, there will be a lot of wheat seeds planted because the straw does not contact the soil or rarely contacts the soil, so that they cannot take root and germinate, which will cause large-scale wheat production in the coming year. If we really want to wait for the straw to rot before planting, it will take at least ten days and a half months to do so, and it is under the condition that there is enough water in the land to rot the straw, and these ten days and a half months will delay the farming season, which will cause large-scale crop yield reduction and farmers 'income will also decrease on a large scale.

And why is straw useless to villagers? In fact, villagers used to be willing to deal with straw, because straw mainly has four uses for it, one is to store it to feed livestock; Second, it is used as fertilizer in the next year's field after decay; Third, rice straw can be used as curtain and straw rope to increase income during slack farming; Fourth, it can be sold to nearby paper mills (used for paper making) and plastic greenhouses (used for winter insulation), especially rice straw, which can reach dozens to more than 100 mu of land according to the situation. But now these outlets are basically blocked: firstly, due to the popularization of mechanized production, few villagers feed livestock at home; secondly, if grass manure is made, it takes a lot of time and energy to get these things out of the field. Moreover, the fertilizer efficiency of grass manure is far less than that of chemical fertilizer and manure. Therefore, villagers generally apply a large amount of chemical fertilizer. If they really want to cultivate lasting fertility, they will generally go to chicken farms and pig farms to buy manure instead of tossing straw at all. Third, the straw hit by the combine harvester is very fragile, and the length is short, so it can no longer be used to make curtains and straw ropes; fourth, in recent years, the paper mills and plastic greenhouses nearby are not doing well, and there is no shortage of raw materials for production, so there is no need for straw. Under such circumstances, the straw will completely become useless, leaving only added trouble and harm, how can villagers not burn?

Finally, from the above situation, we can know that if the straw is not handled well, then the villagers 'farming income for one season or two seasons will be greatly affected. Compared with two or three times a year, one and a half months of smoke and fire, they pay more attention to how to eliminate their troubles in the most convenient way. The bad air would pass in a few days, but if the grain production was not good, I was afraid that this year would be depressed. In contrast, burning straw was a choice without suspense for them.

As for the solution, it is obviously unreliable to rely on repeated government prohibitions and threats, and it is completely useless to rely on propaganda to satisfy one's hunger. It is even more wishful thinking to want farmers to return to their original harvesting methods of 20 years ago or consciously spend money and effort to protect the environment. There are only two ways to really be useful: one is to increase investment to develop something that can make straw rot quickly but not damage soil fertility and crops, and at the same time make it affordable for villagers, which is the best way to return straw to the field. Although there are decomposition agents and the like now, on the one hand, the decomposition process of straw is still relatively long, which will still delay farming time, and farmers are really uncertain whether it will hurt the ground and crops, so they basically do not use them. Second, the government vigorously supports industries that can digest straw in large quantities, such as paper making and feed processing with straw as raw materials, and raises the purchase price of straw. Only in this way can villagers take action to collect useless straw scattered all over the ground and avoid them from solving problems by fire. In the end, it can be summed up in a sentence that people often say: problems in development must be solved by development.