Transcriber: Mia Tran Reviewer: Sebastian Betti
It is October in India, and there’s a slight nip in the air.
As I walk through thick rice fields,
I notice a thick blanket of smoke hovering above in the distance.
I follow the sight and smell of the smoke
and chance upon a group of farmers standing next to a large inferno.
Curious to know more, I meet Kuldeep.
Kuldeep has three tonnes of rice straw left over in his farm after harvest,
which is of no use to him and he has to get rid of it within a week
before planting the next crop.
He burns them in the open,
as that is the cheapest and fastest way.
The smoke lingers in the air for days, affecting the health of his community.
He was recently fined 5000 rupees, or 70 dollars, by the local government,
which is 25 percent of his income for the harvest season.
However, this problem is not witnessed in agricultural lands alone.
It can be witnessed in a forest too.
It is big summer, not even sparing the middle of August.
Soothing views of the mountains during my road journey
is suddenly interrupted by the views of a forest fire engulfing a hillside.
Deepa Davi’s village is located right next to a dense pine forest.
Deepa is a subsistence farmer
whose only source of income is daily wage labour,
which is often not available.
Every summer, the monoculture pine forests next to her village
sheds pine needles to the forest floor
and fuels ravaging forest fires that not only takes to her village,
but also destroys local biodiversity.
The forest fires replace pristine air of the mountains
with smoke for the village community.
Such forest fires are now observed in many other parts of the world as well,
such as the Pacific West Coast, Australia, and Greece.
Just like will Kuldeep and Deepa,
there are millions of farmers worldwide who have a hard time
dealing with their agricultural and forest waste.
It is estimated that worldwide, close to five billion tonnes per year
of agricultural and forest waste, such as rice straws, rice husks,
coconut shreds, sugarcane trash, etc. is burned in the open.
I grew up in New Delhi.
I remember my grandfather getting so sick from the air pollution
that he found it hard to breathe.
In 2016, around the Valley, the air quality became so bad
with harmful particles that went beyond
the measurement capabilities of most measurement instruments.
Recent studies estimate that the open burning
of agriculture and forest waste contribute up to 25 percent of smog
in urban centres such as Delhi, where I currently live,
leading to as many as one in eight deaths in countries such as India
and reducing the affected population’s life expectancy, up to five years.
This is not something we just heard about. We're living it every single day.
However, this is a solvable problem.
There’s a way for farmers like Deepa and Kuldeep
to use their farm and forest waste productively,
prevent harmful smoke emissions,
but at the same time, create 130 billion dollars per year of economic value
for rural communities worldwide.
But what is new here?
We already know that agriculture and forest waste
can be used to make valuable products, such as fuels and fertilizers.
However, the utilisation is just not scaling quickly.
Now, why is this so?
The answer lies in the nature of these wastes itself.
They are loose, wet, and bulky, and of low economic value,
thus making them very expensive to transport and process.
Now, imagine.
Imagine machines that enable Kuldeep and Deepa
to become entrepreneurs and earn extra income
by turning their locally available agriculture and forest waste
into valuable products such as fuels and fertilisers,
while preventing harmful smoke emissions.
Me and my co-founder, Kevin, made Takachar to realise this impact.
Our team at Takachar feels very passionate
about this injustice and missed opportunity.
Over the past few years, we have developed small-scale,
low cost, smoke-free, and portable equipment
that can be large behind tractors and even bullock carts
and taken directly to the sites
where these agricultural and forest waste are located.
The machine then processes this waste
into dense, carbon-rich fuels and fertilisers within 30 minutes.
So how does this work?
Our equipment works similar to cooking.
It heats this waste in controlled amounts of air,
taking out low energy-containing molecules
and leaving behind a dense, carbon-rich material.
This process is known as oxygen-lean torrefaction.
The machine is easy to operate, maintain, and does not require
any external source of energy for heating,
thereby making it suitable to be deployed in remote rural areas.
Our tests show that our equipment
can reduce up to 95 percent of smoke emissions
as compared to open burning of this waste.
Above all, decentralised deployment of our equipment
gives control to farmers to create value.
If our equipment is deployed in Deepa or Kuldeep’s village,
not only do they stand to benefit the becoming local business owners,
but also create an ecosystem where other farmers from the village
can sell the waste to them and own up to 30 percent more income
for the harvest season.
Working with agriculture and forest waste can have numerous benefits.
It can lead to rural value creation, pollution mitigation,
preventing and removing carbon emissions,
and create resilient circular and local value chains
that can withstand external shocks such as COVID 19.
At Takachar, we have embarked on the journey to impact
thirty million farmers worldwide,
create two billion dollars per year of rural value,
and mitigate two million tonnes of smoke emissions by 2030.
However, our lives are linked and we cannot achieve this impact alone.
We need more scientists, innovators, entrepreneurs,
policymakers, and governments to come together to pay attention to this problem,
to have an impact on a planetary scale quickly.
The air quality in many parts of the world are just not acceptable.
I urge you to call out this injustice and challenge the status quo.
Let us work together with farmers like Deepa and Kuldeep
to develop innovative solutions.
Let us become co-creators to clean our air
and prevent carbon emissions by harvesting value from agricultural and forest waste.