1. Machines collecting the hay and compacting it into easily transported bales have been around for ages, so why the NEED for manual labour ?
2. How can labour costs for menial tasks be relevant in a country like India, where labour without any special qualifications is so cheap ?
3. Whether you burn, compost or feed the hay to animals, the carbon will return to the atmosphere in either case - and in any case it will be removed again in the next growing season.
4. Burning the hay on the fields will return nutrients to the fields, thus benefitting the next growing season. This can also be achieved by plowing the hay down.
5. On fields used for seed production burning is essential to keep the produced seed pure.
We do also have a general ban on burning hay on the fields (seed producing fields exempted) here in Denmark, but the reason is to ensure that the hay not used for animals is burned as fuel for generating heat and/or electricity, thus replacing fossil fuels.
The ban keeps the hay prices down.
I simply don't understand the economy of the issue - why would this ban cause such huge costs to Indian farmers ? The hay is a resource which can be expoited.
