WB to Invest in UP Crop Residue Management: Investors Interested

Lucknow, Sep 26 (PTI) Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Thursday met a senior World Bank official and discussed a range of issues, including crop residue management in the state.

World Bank Vice President, South Asia Region, Martin Raiser, after the meeting with the chief minister, said there are potential investors willing to not just solve the issue but also help generate economic benefits through it in Uttar Pradesh.

"A topic on the chief minister's mind was what to do with crop residue. At the moment, it is burnt at the end of the monsoon season, and it creates a lot of air pollution problems. But this is also biomass that in principle, has a value. So, if you can aggregate it, put it into biogas plants or use it to produce biochar, you could have significant additional economic benefits," Raiser told PTI on Thursday.

The issue of stubble burning around October-November as it increases pollution.

The UP government is also busy formulating an action plan to "effectively" deal with the issue.

Raiser said there were potential investors who were willing to provide the solution to the 'crop residue' issue.

"The problem is how to do the aggregation as the farmers have very limited time between the end of the harvest and the planting of the wheat crop, and the labour is scarce. So, we talked about whether (in the project) we could start exploring ways to deal with the issue. My sense is that the chief minister's vision on this is broader than that, broader than just in the context of projects," he noted.

Asked how the World Bank could contribute to finding a solution to the problem, he said: "Very simply speaking, through investment and machinery that helps harvest and baling and that already helps in the aggregation".

"We can also help bring in investors in the context of the project to develop business plans to establish biochar factories, to establish themselves along this value chain."

The WB official said the investor interest in the crop residue project was there.

"I went to an area in Varanasi and met a Singapore-based company that is currently investing along the whole value chain of crop residue collection, bio-gas organic fermented manure as a bioproduct and then finally biochar.

"So, yes, we have met potential investors who are interested in this, and they are interested in working with us both to benefit from some of the knowledge exchanges and to identify target districts," Raiser said.

"This particular company (I met) in Varanasi was from Singapore, and I heard of another company in biochar from the Netherlands...there is also quite a bit of indigenous innovation in biogas," he added.

Asked if the World Bank could help get these potential investors together to help solve the crop residue problem, he said: "The UP chief minister has a vision that offers opportunities for private investment and on our side, we are interested in funding the public component to that – the agriculture extension services meaning where we need to convince the farmers that it is a good idea at the end of the day, the public infrastructure that needs to go into it and the digital connections".

"We have a component that offers matching grants and other types of incentive mechanisms to attract private investment as well on this. We are very far into it, and though I can't give a timeline but in the next few months, we will see this project take off in collaboration with the state of UP, investors and WB."

Apart from crop residue management, Adityanath and Raiser also discussed other issues, including education, vocational training systems and renewable energy.

"In the next couple of months, we are going to see progress on agriculture, I am very encouraged by the discussions (with CM). Equally on air quality … we are going to see progress … not just on crop residue but also other sources of air pollution," he said.