The mainland is a major grain producer, with total grain output reaching 1,373.1 billion catties in 2022, a record high. With the increase in grain production, the mainland is also faced with the situation of large and widely distributed crop straw. During the autumn harvest, open burning of straw will not only directly affect the quality of the atmospheric environment, but also seriously waste agricultural resources. In recent years, straw burning has become an environmental governance problem in many places, and more and more attention has been paid to the issue of straw burning ban in various places.
The necessity of banning straw burning
First, it pollutes the environment and endangers health. The freshly harvested straw has not yet dried out, and incomplete combustion will produce a large amount of nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, hydrocarbons and soot, and may also produce secondary pollutants such as ozone under the action of sunlight, which will significantly increase the air pollution index. At the same time, the toxic and harmful gases produced are more irritating to people's eyes and nose, causing cough, chest tightness, tearing, and may lead to bronchitis.
Second, it is easy to cause traffic safety accidents. The smoke formed by burning straw will cause a decrease in air visibility, which will directly affect the normal operation of civil aviation, railways and highways, and can easily cause traffic accidents and affect personal safety.
The third is to form a serious fire hazard. Straw burning is very easy to ignite the surrounding flammable and explosive materials, especially near firewood and grass, once it causes a fire, the consequences are unimaginable, seriously threatening the life and property safety of the people.
Fourth, it destroys the soil structure. Straw burning causes the ground temperature to rise sharply, which can directly burn and scald the beneficial microorganisms in the soil, affect the full absorption of soil nutrients by crops, and then affect the yield and quality of farmland crops, and affect agricultural income.
Fifth, destroy the image of the beautiful countryside. The billowing smoke and scorched earth formed by straw burning have greatly damaged the appearance of the village and affected the beauty of the environment.
Straw burning ban policy
At the national level, policies and systems on straw burning ban have been promulgated, including the Environmental Protection Law of the People's Republic of China and the Action Plan for Continuous Improvement of Air Quality, which have been clearly stipulated in terms of responsibility assessment, legal investigation, fire point monitoring, and special inspections. For example, Hebei Province has implemented the Decision on Promoting the Comprehensive Utilization of Crop Straw and Prohibiting Open Burning, Henan Province has implemented the Implementation Plan for the Prohibition of Straw Burning and Comprehensive Utilization, and Heilongjiang Province has implemented the Implementation Plan for the Supervision and Inspection of Effectively Solving the Open Burning of Crop Straw and Root Stubble Residues in the Spring of 2023, etc., which provide policy and institutional guarantees for the straw burning ban.
Taking Hebei Province as an example, the main management measures for the ban on straw burning include the following aspects:
The first is to incorporate the ban on straw burning into the grid environmental supervision system, make full use of satellite remote sensing, high-definition video surveillance, unmanned aerial vehicles and other scientific monitoring methods to achieve all-round and all-weather monitoring of open burning of straw, leaves, and wild grass, and establish and improve the fire disposal mechanism.
The second is to improve the prevention and control mechanism of regional linkage, departmental coordination, county and township mainstay, and village group implementation, to ensure that the task of prohibiting open burning of straw is detailed to the field and the responsibility is assigned to the person.
Third, it is necessary to establish and improve the evaluation mechanism and the work reward and punishment system for the work of prohibiting open burning, and give commendations and rewards to those who have made outstanding achievements;
Fourth, we should actively promote the scientific return of straw to the field, no-tillage sowing and conservation tillage technology, and encourage the adoption of straw mechanized scientific return, rapid decomposition and return to the field, heaping and returning to the field and making organic fertilizer, etc., and continuously improve the utilization rate of straw fertilizer.
The ban on straw burning is fraught with difficulties
First, the production of straw is large. According to incomplete statistics, the mainland produces more than 650 million tons of straw from various crops every year.
Second, it is difficult to put management in place. According to the division of functions, straw burning is managed by the ecological environment department, but in fact, it also involves agriculture and rural affairs, finance, transportation, public security and other departments, and it is very difficult to manage.
Third, the operability of laws and regulations is not strong. Although the law clearly stipulates that if the circumstances of straw burning are serious, a fine of less than 200 yuan can be imposed, but practice has proved that this law is less operable. Moreover, straw burning is not an isolated case, and many farmers participate, which makes it very difficult for the ecological and environmental authorities to enforce the law.
Fourth, the harvest cycle is short. At present, most of the young and vigorous labor force in the rural areas go out to work, and most of the people engaged in farming are old, weak, sick and disabled, and the wheat harvest period is less than 10 days, so most of the farmers are reluctant to use wheat stubble to return to the field manually.
Fifth, mechanized harvesting is difficult to manage in a unified manner. Most combine harvesters are mobile operations, not easy to manage, coupled with the tight summer harvest time, driven by economic interests, most combine harvesting in order to save time, labor and reduce machine wear, will leave the wheat stubble very high, and some even only "decapitate" the wheat, leaving straw that can not be handled, which objectively increases the difficulty of straw burning ban work.
Sixth, the comprehensive utilization technology of straw is difficult to promote. Although some successful experiences have been made in the development and utilization of straw in China, a variety of straw can be processed into high-quality feed and industrial raw materials, but due to the high cost and the benefits are not obvious, it is difficult to quickly promote in the short term.
Countermeasures and suggestions
The first is to intensify publicity efforts to raise farmers' awareness of environmental protection. First of all, we should take various forms to carry out extensive publicity and education activities to enhance farmers' understanding of the importance, arduousness and urgency of the work of banning straw burning. Second, all news units should list this work as the focus of propaganda and reporting, and carry out all-round publicity in a planned and step-by-step manner, so that the work of banning straw burning will become a household name and an atmosphere of concern, support, and participation in the work of banning straw burning will be formed in the whole society. Third, mobilize the vast number of party members and cadres in rural areas to actively participate in the work of banning straw burning and fulfill their obligations for rural environmental protection.
The second is to strengthen organizational leadership and improve the management network. It is necessary to put the work of banning straw burning on the important agenda of party committees and governments at all levels, and in line with the attitude of taking overall responsibility for improving the rural environment, persistently and unremittingly grasp it, and set up corresponding working institutions in accordance with the emergency plan for banning straw burning;
Third, it is necessary to speed up the restructuring of the agricultural industry. Under the current conditions that the market system has not yet developed and perfected, and without accurate market information as a guide, blindly expanding the production of wheat and rape crops often runs counter to the law of the development of the market economy.
Fourth, rely on science and technology to solve the problem of comprehensive utilization of straw. The state should introduce relevant economic policies as soon as possible, to support the comprehensive utilization of straw industry, agriculture and rural areas, agricultural machinery supervision and other departments to do a good job, strengthen the supervision of the wheat harvest site, control the height of wheat stubble, widely introduce micro-tillage, crushing and returning machine, grass buryer, gasifier and other machinery and equipment, the government should be included in the comprehensive utilization of straw funds included in the budget, the introduction of preferential policies, multi-party fund-raising, increase financial subsidies, credit incentives, and actively encourage scientific and technological personnel to carry out scientific and technological research.
Fifth, it is necessary to further improve laws and regulations and intensify investigation and punishment. Intensify the coordination between various departments, jointly enforce the law, form a joint force, and change from a single on-site "blocking" to a combination of "blocking and sparseness" and focusing on "sparseness". It is necessary to formulate local laws and regulations to control the ban on straw burning as soon as possible, do a good job in inspecting the ban on straw burning, actively carry out law enforcement training, standardize law enforcement behaviors, and never tolerate and accommodate open burning of straw.
Sixth, improve regulatory technology and establish a digital information monitoring system. Due to the dispersion and randomness of straw burning, it is difficult to find the straw burning site information in the first time, accurately and comprehensively in the actual supervision process, which brings great difficulties to the supervisors. In order to solve the problem of narrow area, low efficiency, insufficient forensic supervision personnel, and time-consuming process involved in the current straw burning ban in the supervision process, the information investment in monitoring technology can be increased in the future, such as the establishment of an integrated straw burning monitoring platform for sky and ground, the research and development of high-precision fire point extraction algorithms, and the use of satellite remote sensing data to monitor straw burning fire points. At the same time, combined with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and manual labor, the fire point information monitored by satellites was verified to improve the level of straw burning supervision and informatization.
Source: Journal of Environmental Economics