Benjamin Laviña, a farmer from Laguna, has been planting rice for more than 40 years now. Come harvest time, Laviña gets only the grains, and burns the stems and leaves—or the rice straw—for disposal.
Benjamin Laviña, a farmer from Laguna, has been planting rice for more than 40 years now. Come harvest time, Laviña gets only the grains, and burns the stems and leaves—or the rice straw—for disposal.
Laviña is among the farmers who consider rice straw as an agricultural waste that could hinder land preparation for the next planting season.
According to the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), some 300 million tons of this rice by-product are burned every year. The latest assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projected that burning of crop residue, including rice straw, contributes a fairly good amount of greenhouse-gas emission by the agricultural sector.
See full article at Business Mirror