Crop residue burning increased during the COVID-19 lockdown: A case study of rural India

Abstract

The customary practice of crop residue burning (CRB) is a major policy concern across several developing economies because of the associated increase in air pollution and reduction in soil quality. CRB poses a hazard to public health and sustainable farmland management. We collected original survey data from a panel of 400 wheat farmers on CRB choices during April–May of 2019 and 2020 – with the latter coinciding with India's COVID-19 nationwide lockdown. This timeline of events facilitated a unique identification of changes in CRB that are attributable to the lockdown. Several studies find that lockdowns during 2020 had beneficial effects on the environment owing to reduced economic activity. However, our findings indicate that CRB may have unintentionally increased during the lockdown. A binary variable regression framework analyzes the determinants of CRB choices of farmers over two years. We control for farmers' opinions on various socioeconomic aspects of the pandemic lockdown to examine its effects on their CRB decisions. The lockdown significantly increased the likelihood of CRB by up to 12%. Furthermore, farmers who lost agricultural income and those compelled to sell assets during the lockdown were 22% and 19% more inclined, respectively, to choose CRB. Labor mobility ceased during the lockdown and increased the cost of environmentally friendly farmland management; this increased the likelihood of CRB by 6%. This study contributes to a growing literature on the unintentional consequences of pandemic lockdowns.

Keywords

• Crop residue burning
• COVID-19 lockdown
• Unintentional consequences
• Farmland management