Air quality has declined over the last decade, with pollution levels reaching alarming heights at the onset of winter in parts of North India. While several factors contribute to this deterioration, crop residue burning remains a significant cause. It not only aggravates air pollution and harms public health but also damages soil health — destroying beneficial micro-organisms, reducing crop yields, and consequently lowering farmers’ incomes.

CII Foundation launched a Crop Residue Management (CRM) initiative in 2018 in 19 villages of Punjab as a pilot project to mitigate crop residue burning and promote sustainable agriculture. The initiative emerged through CII’s collaboration with NITI Aayog in 2017 to study the issue of stubble burning and air pollution. Over the years, the CII Foundation expanded the project into a multi-stakeholder partnership involving the government, industry, agricultural universities, and the farming community. Currently the program is being implemented in 1000+ villages, covering 2 lakh+ farmers and 11 lakh+ acres of farmland.

Under this initiative, farmers are supported through in-situ and ex-situ methods to adopt environment friendly alternatives to stubble burning through a gamut of interventions.