The Hindu : National : Standing crops damaged in Nagapattinam

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Sunday, Jan 16, 2005

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National

Standing crops damaged in Nagapattinam

By V. Surjit

NAGAPATTINAM, JAN. 15. Nature has been very cruel to the people of Nagapattinam. The district, which is located at the tailend of the Cauvery delta in Tamil Nadu, has experienced severe drought in the last five years.

The people of the region depend on a single crop of rice for their livelihood and employment.

This year, the fields received water released into the Cauvery, but unprecedented rain in October resulted in floods, which damaged the crop severely. Cultivators in villages around Vailankanni lost their crops twice due to floods and they have now done the sowing for the third time. The large-scale intrusion of seawater into the agricultural land along the coastal villages in Nagapattinam has caused serious damage to standing crops of paddy, groundnut and pulses.

Apart from damaging the standing crop, the silt and mud deposited along with the saline water have made crop production impossible for the next three cropping seasons. Soil scientists say that seawater with high salinity levels (35 parts per thousand) have inundated the agricultural fields and this will increase the salinity of soil by many times, resulting in crops wilting in a couple of days.

Scientists at Krishi Vijnan Kendra, Sikkal, have undertaken a preliminary assessment of the extent of land affected by seawater intrusion. According to them, around 5350 hectares of agricultural land with standing crop, spread over five blocks in the district, have been affected. The damage to garden land and other horticultural crops has not been included.

The main damage has been to paddy in the milking stage and pulses and groundnut in the vegetative stage. According to the scientists, the removal of salts from the affected areas by natural cycles has to wait for at least a year and the chances of raising the next crop are very remote. In areas where sand castings are more than 12 cm deep, they have to be physically removed and then organic and inorganic amendments have to be applied to make the land suitable for agricultural purposes.

There has also been large-scale damage to livestock. This has serious consequences for the livelihoods of cultivators and agricultural labourers in the district.

The disaster has also led to a debate on a large number of environmental and legal issues. It is interesting that in villages or parts of villages where sand dunes were intact, they have shielded the shore from the waves and prevented the intrusion of seawater.

(The writer is a Senior Research Fellow in the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. He is doing fieldwork for his Ph.D in Nagapattinam and Thanjavur districts.)

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