Key informant survey on village characteristics and crop residue management in Madhya Pradesh, India

The Green Revolution has led to intensive, irrigated rice-wheat systems in the Indian subcontinent that has helped the nations reduce poverty and food insecurity. The limited turn-around time between rice harvest and sowing of the winter crop (wheat) and mechanized harvesting of rice pose a critical challenge for farmers to sustainably handle the surplus rice residues. Because only a few economically viable residue-management alternatives are readily available, a majority of the 2.5 million rice-wheat farmers of the Indo Gangetic Plains (IGP) burn an estimated 23 million metric tons of rice stubble in October and November. Residue burning causes an emission of short-lived climate pollutants, such as methane and black carbon. More importantly, the decrease in air quality due to rice stubble burning has a significant adverse effect on human pulmonary functions. In the recent past, rice residue burning and the resultant increase in air pollution have received significant media attention. However, the residue burning of rabi (winter) crops that occurs during the March-May period – when wheat crop residue is burnt – goes rather unnoticed. The preliminary analysis of remote sensing data indicated that wheat residue burning is prevalent in the Central Indian states, especially Madhya Pradesh. The potential technologies to manage wheat residue (e.g., zero tillage direct-seeded rice) are not yet popular in Central India. Against this background, the objective of the study can be stated as follows – 1. Groundtruthing of satellite data on wheat residue burning and connecting farming system characteristics to farm-level residue burning 2. Estimating the economic and environmental impacts (e.g., GHG emission) of wheat residue burning in the Madhya Pradesh state of India 3. Designing interventions to incentivize farmers to adopt farming technologies that avoid residue burning while preparing land for Kharif crops. A farm household survey and village survey were conducted in three districts of Madhya Pradesh, where residue burning poses a serious environmental concern, such as Rajgarh, Vidisha, Hoshangabad.This dataset contains the village survey data collected through key informant interviews in 21 randomly selected villages with rice-wheat production systems.