According to government monitors on Tuesday, the illicit burning of agricultural fields in northern India hit a record high this season, contributing to a poisonous fog that is strangling millions of people, including in the capital city of New Delhi.
The government-run Punjab Remote Sensing Centre reports that 1,251 field fires occurred in Punjab, an agricultural center in the north known as “India’s wheat bowl,” on Monday.
At the beginning of each winter, tens of thousands of farmers in the states of Punjab and Haryana burn their crop residue around the capital, preparing fields for wheat by clearing them of freshly produced rice.
Although the practice is prohibited, farmers nonetheless use it as the quickest and least expensive method of getting their fields ready for the upcoming crop season because legal enforcement is lax.
