Soil Health Management through in-situ Sugarcane Trash Composting

Abstract

Sugarcane trash burning inside the field is a common practice among farmers in India due to a lack of labour and less time available for sowing the next crop. This is a dangerous practice that has harmed soil health, air quality, and human health, resulting in massive and monetary losses. The present study has been based on primary data collected from the sugarcane grower to highlight the constraints to this issue and to study the influence of in-situ sugarcane trash composting on soil fertility and cane yield. Traditional norms, lack of awareness on utilization of trash, lack of machinery and high cost of machinery emerged as the major reasons for the ongoing practice. The results of demonstrations on in-situ sugarcane trash composting in 10 farmers field shows that, in-situ sugarcane trash composting has increased the organic carbon, available N, available P and available K content in soil from 0.42 to 0.45%, 317 to 331 kgha^-1, 14.5 to 16.1 kgha^-1 and 520 to 551 kgha^-1 respectively. The average cane yield of 92.5 tha^-1 was recorded in demo field and it was 4.8 percent over control plot (88.3 kgha^-1). The economic analysis showed that the gross income increased to 4.7 percent with the benefit cost ratio of 2.99 over control plot. Therefore in-situ composting can be a good alternate to mitigate these problems. In-situ composting and trash mulching in sugarcane field can be a good alternate to mitigate these problems. Some of the measures to deal with the problem can be creating awareness among the farmers about eco loss and strict implementation of the law prohibiting the burning of crop residue, custom hiring of expensive machinery for chopping of straw, off farm utilization were suggested by farmers.