Far removed from the agricultural fire “hotspots” of Northwestern India, rice residue burning is on the rise in Eastern India with implications for regional air quality and agricultural sustainability. The underlying drivers contributing to the increase in burning have been linked to the adoption of mechanized (combine) harvesting but, in general, are inadequately understood. We hypothesize that the adoption of burning as a management practice results from a set of socio-technical interactions rather than emerging from a single factor. Using a mixed methods approach, a household survey (n = 475) provided quantitative insights into landscape and farm-scale drivers of burning and was complemented by an in-depth qualitative survey (n = 36) to characterize decision processes and to verify causal inferences derived from the broader survey. For communities where the combine harvester is present, our results show that rice residue burning is not inevitable. The decision to burn appears to emerge from a cascading sequence of events, starting with the following: (1) decreasing household labor, leading to (2) decreasing household livestock holdings, resulting in (3) reduced demands for residue fodder, incentivizing (4) adoption of labor-efficient combine harvesting and subsequent burning of loose residues that are both difficult to collect and of lower feeding value than manually harvested straw. Local demand for crop residues for livestock feeding plays a central role mediating transitions to burning. Consequently, policy response options that only consider the role of the combine harvester are likely to be ineffective. Innovative strategies such as the creation of decentralized commercial models for dairy value chains may bolster local residue demand by addressing household-scale labor bottlenecks to maintaining livestock. Secondary issues, such as timely rice planting, merit consideration as part of holistic responses to “bend” agricultural burning trajectories in Eastern India towards more sustainable practices.

远离印度西北部的农业火灾“热点”，印度东部的水稻残渣焚烧呈上升趋势，对区域空气质量和农业可持续性产生影响。导致燃烧增加的潜在驱动因素与采用机械化（联合收割机）收割有关，但总的来说，人们并不充分了解。我们假设采用燃烧作为一种管理实践是一系列社会技术互动的结果，而不是来自单一因素。使用混合方法，住户调查 （n = 475） 提供了对景观和农场规模燃烧驱动因素的定量见解，并辅以深入的定性调查 （n = 36），以描述决策过程并验证从更广泛的调查中得出的因果推断。对于有联合收割机的社区，我们的结果表明，水稻残渣焚烧并非不可避免。焚烧的决定似乎源于一系列事件，首先是：（1） 减少家庭劳动力，导致 （2） 家庭牲畜持有量减少，导致 （3） 对残渣饲料的需求减少，激励 （4） 采用省力的联合收割方式，随后焚烧松散的残渣，这些残渣既难以收集，又比人工收割的秸秆饲料价值低。当地对用于牲畜饲养的作物残茬的需求在向焚烧过渡中起着核心作用。因此，仅考虑联合收割机作用的政策应对方案很可能无效。 创新策略（例如为乳品价值链创建分散式商业模式）可以通过解决家庭规模的劳动力瓶颈来维持牲畜，从而增加当地的残渣需求。次要问题，如及时种植水稻，值得考虑，作为整体应对印度东部农业焚烧轨迹向更可持续做法“弯曲”的一部分。