The key to banning straw burning lies in addressing the root cause and solving the problem at its source.

During recent field research in several major agricultural counties in Henan, reporters found that banning straw burning has now become the "number one difficulty" in grassroots governance. Officials camp out in the fields and sleep at the field edges, yet have grievances they dare not voice. County-level finances spend tens of millions at every turn and feel enormous pressure. However, despite strict defense and desperate guarding, straw still has no smooth outlet, making the ban ineffective in practice. (Xinhua Net, June 28)

To strengthen environmental protection and reduce pollution, China explicitly prohibited straw burning as early as 1999. Although the "burning ban" has been reiterated year after year and satellite remote sensing technology has been used for monitoring, after every crop harvest, "columns of smoke rise everywhere" still occur. For this reason, localities have successively issued "burning bans," first imposing fines on local governments and second holding leading officials accountable, yet the phenomenon of straw burning remains repeatedly prohibited but not stopped.

We do not advocate burning straw, because burning straw is extremely harmful to the environment. It not only scorches the soil and causes a decline in farmland quality, but the dense smoke produced by burning also severely pollutes the environment, endangers human health, affects road traffic and aviation safety, and creates a greatly negative impact on the image of cities. But relying only on a "burning ban," a method that treats the symptoms rather than the root cause, clearly has poor results.

In my view, the key to banning straw burning lies in addressing the root cause, and efforts should combine blocking and channeling. "Blocking" means strictly guarding against it and spending great effort on rectification; "channeling" means finding more ways to comprehensively utilize straw, letting farmers appreciate the value of straw, and turning passive "banning of burning" into an active "reluctance to burn." It is necessary to intensify "blocking" and broaden the channels for "channeling," so that large amounts of straw can be turned from waste into treasure, no longer becoming a headache-inducing waste product in agricultural production, but instead participating in the economic recycling process, gaining new life, and generating new value.

In fact, under current technological conditions, the means of developing the potential economic value of straw are already relatively mature. For example, using straw for power generation, manufacturing building materials, and producing renewable bio-oil can all create good economic benefits; for another example, the use of chopping devices and decomposing agents can also better convert straw into fertilizer. If the government truly wants to solve the difficult problem of straw burning, it cannot simply ban it outright for convenience, but should strengthen technical support, financial subsidies, publicity and guidance, and so on, so that farmers can benefit from the diversified use of straw. Only in this way can twice the result be achieved with half the effort.