The combustion on the stubbles "affects the agricultural lands"

The preparing of lands for plowing is, almost every year, an occasion for the news that announce fire and not only, caused by the combustion on stubbles.

Last week started, in fact, with news regarding the fire caused by spreading.

The correspondents of Radio România Actualităţi have communicated that in many regions of the country the firemen have intervened to extinguish fire caused by the householders that had cleaned the fields.

The specialists agree that, besides the fact the combustion on stubbles is forbidden by the Romanian authorities, this process does not help the soil with anything, on the contrary.

The director of the Institute for Cereals and Technical Plants Fundulea, Marian Verzea, considers that combustion of the vegetal rests harms the soil fertility.

He sustains that, by combusting, the vegetal rests existing on the agricultural lands, which should be used for enriching the soil, are wasted.

"In time, this practice of burning the vegetal rests has been stuck in our country, during spring or autumn, when cleanness is made. It is beneficial neither for soil, nor for agriculture, in general. The respective organic material, which is burned, should be incorporated within the soil so that, to some extent, it improves its fertility", states Marian Verzea.

The combustion on the stubbles, affirm the researchers, is necessary only when the existing vegetal rests are attacked by certain pests.

All the other reasons invoked by those who support the idea of combusting the vegetal rests don’t have validity, considers Gheorghe Roman, professor at the Faculty of Agriculture within the University of Agronomic Sciences and Veterinary Medicine Bucharest.

"I would say that the vegetal rests combustion is a crime for agriculture. People say that, classically, the combustion of the stubbles means the destroying of weed seeds, of pathogen agents, of harmful insects and so on. You should know that all these are not true, except when the straws are attacked by the red worm", also states Valentin Gheorghe Roman.

He specifies that the stubbles combustion hasn’t any practical effect on the harmful organisms that the supporters of this idea talk about.

"It is only an economic problem: the farmers get rid of the necessity to chop the straws and eventually to incorporate them into the soil", concluded Valentin Gheorghe Roman.

The specialists’ conclusion would be, therefore, that the combustion on the stubbles remains a cheap modality to clean the agricultural lands, without any benefic effect on the soil, on the contrary.

Translated by
Alexandra-Diana Mircea
MTTLC, Bucharest University