Crop residue in the context of "Agricultural waste"

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⭐ Core Definition: Crop residue

Crop residues are waste materials generated by agriculture. The two types are:

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👉 Crop residue in the context of Agricultural waste

Agricultural waste are plant residues from agriculture. These waste streams originate from arable land and horticulture. Agricultural waste are all parts of crops that are not used for human or animal food. Crop residues consist mainly of stems, branches (in pruning), and leaves. It is estimated that, on average, 80% of the plant of such crops consists of agricultural waste.

The four most commonly grown agricultural crops worldwide are sugarcane, maize, cereals and rice. The total weight of all these crops is more than 16,500 billion kilograms per year. Since 80% of this consists of agricultural waste, many tens of thousands of billions of kilograms of agricultural waste remain worldwide. Some 700 million tonnes of agricultural waste is produced annually by the EU.

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In this Dossier

Crop residue in the context of Hoe (tool)

A hoe is an ancient and versatile agricultural and horticultural hand tool used to shape soil, remove weeds, clear soil, and harvest root crops. Shaping the soil includes piling soil around the base of plants (hilling), digging narrow furrows (drills) and shallow trenches for planting seeds or bulbs. Weeding with a hoe includes agitating the surface of the soil or cutting foliage from roots, and clearing the soil of old roots and crop residues. Hoes for digging and moving soil are used to harvest root crops such as potatoes.

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Crop residue in the context of Stubble burning

Stubble burning is the practice of intentionally setting fire to the straw stubble that remains after grains, such as rice and wheat, have been harvested. The technique is used to quickly and cheaply clear fields. It is still widespread today.

Stubble burning has been associated with increasing air pollution over the past few decades due to the particulate matter contamination it distributes into the atmosphere. In India, stubble burning generates a thick haze. These fires pose a significant health risk to individuals across all ages.

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Crop residue in the context of Forage

Forage is a plant material (mainly plant leaves and stems) eaten by grazing livestock. Historically, the term forage has meant only plants eaten by the animals directly as pasture, crop residue, or immature cereal crops, but it is also used more loosely to include similar plants cut for fodder and carried to the animals, especially as hay or silage.

While the term forage has a broad definition, the term forage crop is used to define crops, annual or biennial, which are grown to be utilized by grazing or harvesting as a whole crop.

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Crop residue in the context of Disc harrow

A disk harrow is a harrow whose cutting edges are a row of concave metal discs, which may be scalloped or set at an oblique angle. It is an agricultural implement that is used to till the soil where crops are to be planted. It is used to chop up unwanted weeds or crop residue. It is also one of the many soil cultivation implements alongside tillers and moldboard plows.

It consists of many carbon steel discs, and sometimes longer-lasting boron steel discs, which have many varying concavities and disc blade sizes and spacing (the choices of the latter being determined by the final result required in a given soil type) and which are arranged into two sections ("offset disk harrow") or four sections ("tandem disk harrow"). When viewed from above, the four sections would appear to form an "X" which has been flattened to be wider than it is tall. The discs are also offset so that they are not parallel with the overall direction of the implement. This arrangement ensures that the discs will repeatedly slice any ground to which they are applied. The concavity of the discs as well as their offset angle causes them to loosen and lift the soil that they cut.

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Crop residue in the context of Biogasoline

Biogasoline is a type of synthetic gasoline produced from biomass such as algae and plants. Like traditionally petroleum-derived gasoline, biogasoline is made up of hydrocarbons with 6 (hexane) to 12 (dodecane) carbon atoms per molecule, and can be directly used in conventional internal combustion engines. However, unlike traditional gasoline, which are fractionally distilled from crude oil and thus are non-renewable fossil fuels, biogasolines are renewable biofuels made from algal materials, energy crops such as beets and sugarcane, and other cellulosic residues traditionally regarded to as agricultural waste.

Biofuels most often apply to the product of compounded biomass substance called feedstocks. Biomass is abstract in nature and used to produce gasoline that generates net-zero carbon emissions through a process called gasification. There are multi-various methods through which this fuel can be produced; however, determining the optimal gasification route through which to apply a particular feedstock or biomass relies on experimentation and trial and error.

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Crop residue in the context of Household air pollution

Household Air Pollution (HAP) is a significant form of indoor air pollution (IAP) mostly relating to cooking and heating methods used in developing countries and even smaller islands in the Caribbean. Since much of the cooking is carried out with biomass fuel, in the form of wood, charcoal, dung, and crop residue, in indoor environments that lack proper ventilation, millions of people, primarily women and children face serious health risks. In total, about three billion people in developing countries are affected by this problem. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that cooking-related pollution causes 3.8 million annual deaths. The Global Burden of Disease study estimated the number of deaths in 2021 at 3.1 million. The problem is closely related to energy poverty and cooking.

Smoke from traditional household solid fuel combustion commonly contains a range of incomplete combustion products, including both fine and coarse particulate matter (e.g., PM2.5, PM10), carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and a variety of organic air pollutants.

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