Punjab Farm Fire Cases Fall Nearly 90% on Rs 1,325 Crore Machinery Push

Punjab has cut farm fire incidents from 49,922 in 2022 to 5,114 in 2025 — a near 90% fall — after spending Rs 1,325.35 crore on farm machinery over four years, agriculture minister Gurmeet Singh Khudian announced.

The subsidy programme deployed 94,456 Crop Residue Management machines across the state in that period. These are implements that let farmers handle paddy straw in the field — baling it, mulching it or mixing it into the soil — instead of burning it after the rice harvest, a practice blamed for the region's severe winter air pollution.

How fast is the current procurement running?

Fast, by the state's own numbers. Farmers have already bought 22,763 machines for the 2026-27 cycle, backed by nearly Rs 201 crore in subsidy. Khudian called that a 73% increase on the 13,147 machines supplied during the whole of the previous year.

The year-wise breakdown shows how spending has moved:

• 2022-23: Rs 279.96 crore disbursed for 27,250 machines
• 2023-24: Rs 168.88 crore for 13,179 machines
• 2024-25: Rs 259.81 crore for 18,117 machines
• 2025-26: Rs 415.7 crore for 13,147 machines

The 2025-26 line is the anomaly. Subsidy spending jumped 60% year on year while machine counts stayed flat, which points to higher per-unit support rather than lower demand.

Why does early procurement matter?

Khudian said securing more than 22,000 machines before the 2026-27 season begins means Punjab will enter the next paddy harvest prepared in advance for residue management, rather than scrambling once burning season approaches. For growers, that translates into equipment being on-farm and operational when the narrow post-harvest sowing window for wheat opens.

The minister appealed to farmers to make optimum use of the subsidised equipment, citing the need to protect the environment and public health.

Who gets access to the machines?

The government has earmarked 75% of Custom Hiring Centre funds for Primary Agricultural Cooperative Societies, known as PACS. Custom Hiring Centres work like machinery libraries: farmers rent equipment by use instead of buying every implement themselves, which matters for smallholders who cannot justify owning a Rs several-lakh baler or mulcher.

Routing three-quarters of that money through cooperatives places PACS at the centre of Punjab's distribution effort. The stated aim is to extend machine access beyond farmers with the purchasing power to buy their own kit — the small and marginal growers who, historically, had the fewest alternatives to burning.

What about bio-decomposers?

Alongside hardware, the state has allocated Rs 6 crore for applying bio-decomposers — microbial solutions that break crop residue down in the field — as part of a wider information, education and communication campaign.

The announcement gave no details on how many farms the bio-decomposer programme will cover or when it will be implemented. Watch that gap. The chemistry is cheap and scalable, but without a published schedule and coverage targets, its contribution to the fire-count decline stays unmeasurable.

What should farmers watch next?

The numbers show the strategy is working where it counts: burned fields are down roughly nine-fold in three years, and the 2026-27 machinery pipeline is already ahead of any previous full year. The next signals to track are whether the 22,763 machines already procured translate into another drop in fire incidents this season, how quickly the PACS-run Custom Hiring Centres scale up rental access, and whether the Rs 6 crore bio-decomposer campaign arrives with a concrete rollout timetable.