Organic farming, written for Indian fields.

After harvest most fields are left with several tonnes of straw per acre. Straw alone is slow to break down because it is high in carbon and coated in silica, so the trick is to pair it with nitrogen-rich material rather than to burn it.

Build the heap in layers on a shaded patch near water: about six inches of chopped straw, then a thin layer of fresh cow dung slurry, then green matter — parthenium before it seeds, gliricidia loppings, kitchen waste, azolla skimmed from the field. Repeat until the heap is chest high and roughly a metre and a half across. Keep it damp like a wrung cloth, never sodden.

Turn it at day 15, 30 and 50. In humid weather it will heat quickly, and a properly built heap will be dark, sweet-smelling and crumbly by week ten. Two heaps of this size will cover an acre at maintenance rates.

If you have paddy stubble you cannot lift, spread dung slurry and a bio-decomposer over it and flood shallowly for a week before puddling. It rots in place instead of going up in smoke.