Page 34 - cosmos4

Have you ever wondered that the delicious chapatti you eat
almost every day, mostly made up of wheat, has such a
long journey before it reaches our homes. There is no doubt
that the grains travel a long journey from the farm to the

table. But have you ever wondered about what happens
to the wheat straw or what we call stubble which once bore

the fresh and golden
wheat grains? It is of no
use to the farmers but
the farmers having the
motive of wasting
nothing replenish the nutrients back into the soil.
How? You may ask. They burn it! It might seem
crazy that 70% of the farmers of Haryana and
Punjab burn 35 million tons of wheat stubble every
year! There are a number of environmental
hazards that this practice of stubble
burning has, the major one being pollution.
We humans have a unique characteristic.

No doubt we create problems but we also
find solutions to them. And wouldn’t it be
wonderful if this waste (wheat stubble)
could become a source of energy
production? Yes, there is a way and it is
bio-ethanol production. Bio-ethanol or
cellulosic ethanol is an alternative waste
management method to wheat stubble. This stubble is burnt after harvesting the
wheat grains and the wind direction being north-east, these winds of smoke move
towards Delhi, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh and cause a lot of pollution there.