Our New Innovation Finally Offers Smallholder Farmers a Profitable Alternative to Open-Field Burning
The No-burn Rice Farming practice is, unlike existing solutions, more profitable than agricultural burning and prevents the release of millions of tonnes of CO2.
During the growing season, Myanmar‘s Irrawaddy Delta is a vibrant green patchwork of rice fields. But twice a year, after harvesting, these two million acres of land are consumed with flames, which bake the soil and send plumes of thick, black smoke billowing into the air.
Open-field burning is a centuries-old tradition, made necessary by the narrow window of time that farmers have to clear their land of crop residues before planting for the next season.
Burning the tough, deeply rooted straw stubble left behind after harvest has numerous downsides. As well as making the air unpleasant to breathe, causing widespread health problems, and contributing to climate change, it also ravages the soil, robbing it of nutrients and making it hard and very difficult to till. This means farmers must apply more fertilizer, and often need to rent machinery, extra labor, or both in order to till the baked topsoil.
But the vast majority of smallholders have no viable alternative to burning. Hiring workers to clear away the residue is too costly, and would wipe out any profit from the harvest, while waiting for the straw to decompose naturally would take too long. If farmers plant too late their crops face increased risk of failure. With many farmers relying on double cropping to make ends meet, delays in one season have a ripple effect to the next or shorten the time for optimal growth.
Hay balers and combine harvesters, the solution used by agribusinesses, are too expensive for smallholders, and in many cases would not be able to physically fit on their plots of land.
This is why recent attempts to ban open-field burning in neighboring India and Thailand have fallen flat, as have initiatives to discourage the practice by subsidizing machinery; they did not address the specific pain points of smallholders and their farm enterprises.
When our team decided to tackle this problem, it was obvious that any solution must prioritize the needs of farmers. Our agronomists, designers and frontline teams worked alongside farmers for three crop cycles during the research phase.
The process involved taking a close look at farm-level profitability, with the aim being not just to stop the burning, but to do so by offering an alternative that is profitable for farmers within one season. “Our design approach is that, first and foremost, it has to be convenient and profitable for farmers,” said Proximity’s Co-founder Debbie Aung Din. “Otherwise it’s a non-starter.”
A Farmer-centered Solution
The result of our research and design process is a microorganism-based formula that can be spread across fields to speed up the decomposition of the rice straw, in under two weeks without the need for burning. It is made from a mixture of Effective Microorganisms (EM), a type of biological soil amendment made up of beneficial microbes, rice bran, a byproduct from rice mills, and nitrogen fertilizer.
With most regenerative practices, it takes a long time to reap the financial benefits, which is why adoption is often slow. With our No-burn Rice Farming practice, farmers can see the return on their investment within one season.
In fact, they can recover the cost of the formulation — around USD 25 per acre — within thirty days because no-burn farming requires less tilling and fertilizer before planting. It also returns nutrients to the soil, leading to more rich, biodiverse land and improved crop yields at the next harvest. Based on our initial impact study with 350 farmers, they experienced a 10% increase in yields from applied acres, and USD 500–1,000 in net farm income increases, equivalent to about 14% of their annual household incomes.
Farmers can also see and feel the improvement to their land. “Our customers say they step on the soil and they can tell it’s rich. It’s also more pliable,” Debbie said. This helps farmers to roughly halve the costs of hiring workers to till the land before sowing, buying diesel and renting machinery.
U Than Htike, a paddy farmer in the village of Yae Ma Nay Chaung in Kyaiklat Township, has until recently always burned the straw stubble in his farm, which caused his son breathing difficulties.
“Back then, we believed these unfortunate incidents were somehow divine punishment. I now realize these health problems were the effects of field burning,” he said.
After switching to our No-burn Rice Farming practice, he is seeing the benefits not just for his health, but also his finances. The first thing he noticed, though, was how quickly the residue decomposed. “I was astounded by the results within just two weeks,” he said.
Unlike previous innovations, the No-burn Rice Farming practice has clear and immediate benefits. Since the pilot launch in May last year more than 15,000 farmers have purchased our branded-EM bottles to adopt the practice, abandoning the century-long practice of open field burning.
Preventing Millions of Tonnes of CO2 Emissions
Open field burning is responsible for more than a third of all black carbon emissions, a significant contributor to climate change. In Myanmar alone, burning by rice farmers releases about seven million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere each year.
To encourage adoption of the no-burn practice, our team wants to ensure that it collects the most rigorous and convincing data possible on the benefits. We are gathering harvest data from 200 farmers, as well as a control group of another 200 farmers, to analyze differences in yield and soil health. We will also work with Michigan State University’s agricultural economist team to carry out an independent, randomized assessment next season.
“We want to make sure we have robust evidence,” Debbie said. “It will really help drive adoption if farmers can see the benefits.”
We estimate that the No-burn Rice Farming practice has already prevented 100,000 tonnes of carbon from entering the atmosphere. This year, we aim to double the amount of rice farmers that adopt the practice, and by 2026 we hope to reach 150,000 of Myanmar’s farmers, which will in turn prevent the burning of more than one million acres of land.
This would translate to avoiding the equivalent of two million tonnes of CO2 from entering the atmosphere over the next three years, according to a Life Cycle Analysis by ClimatePoint.
“It really shows the scale that’s possible in terms of the amount of emissions that can be reduced for such a modest investment,” Debbie said. “It’s a slam dunk.”
