90 per cent areas suffered more than 50 per cent crop loss

Finding almost 90 per cent of the area cultivated in the district last year to have suffered more than 50 per cent loss, district administration has issued annevari certificates to about 1.58 lakh farmers so that their crop loans could be restructured, District Collector Darez Ahmed announced here on Thursday.
Speaking at the farmers’ grievances day meeting here, he pointed out that the banks had already received a circular that they need not even wait for the annevari certificate from the district collectors for restructuring the loan.

While being confident of a good samba crop this year, the Cauvery Delta Farmers’ Welfare Association (CDFA) is pushing for a permanent solution to the perennial problem of the north east monsoon rain water running off into the sea.

While the bounty from south west monsoon is controlled by Karnataka as the major Cauvery catchment area is located in that State, north east monsoon benefits Tamil Nadu directly.

The Cauvery eco-system is in deep trouble with the current year being one of the worst drought years that the river has witnessed.

The delta region, known as ‘Marudha Nilam’, can no longer have that nomenclature as it is now shorn of Marudu trees, a native plant. The ‘minimum viable population’ (MVP) size of this tree has gone down and has become virtually an ‘endangered species’. Frequent loss of flows in the river over the past four decades has resulted in gradual degradation of the eco-system, laments K.V.Krishnamurthy, former Head of the Department of Botany, Bharathidasan University, considered an authority on the Cauvery’s flora and fauna.

102 tonnes of garbage generated in Srirangam, Tiruvanaikovil