How one man’s vision is changing farming practices in TN’s delta region

3 a long time ago, when Nimal Raghavan (33) frequented his indigenous village in Tamil Nadu from Dubai, where he was operating, very little did he picture that a storm brewing over the Bay of Bengal would change the training course of his daily life forever. Or that he would be instrumental in villagers in the spot switching from coconut cultivation to paddy and sugarcane farming.

On November 16, 2018, as Raghavan was calming in his village Nadiyam in Peravurani city in Thanjavur district, the effective Cyclone Gaja hit the coastal areas of Tamil Nadu, leaving behind a trail of destruction. Hundreds of homes were destroyed, lakhs of electrical power poles were harmed and nearly one particular crore coconut trees were uprooted in the Delta region with Thanjavur district’s Orathanadu, Pattukkottai and Peravurani bearing the brunt of the large velocity winds. The 3 regions were recognized for coconut cultivation, which was a supply of livelihood for eighty for every cent of the family members here.

The induce issue

Having witnessed the devastating influence of the cyclone, Raghavan stop his job and plunged into reduction do the job. It was for the duration of these reduction initiatives that Raghavan realised that farmers in the spot were overly dependent on coconut farming and ignoring quickly-produce crops like paddy and sugarcane.

“I decided to convey farmers again to rice and sugarcane cultivation. But h2o shortage was a obstacle,” Raghavan suggests.

So, he decided to deal with h2o administration and lake rejuvenation.

Alongside with his senior in school Naveen Anandhan and handful of other children, he shaped the Kadaimadai Spot Integrated Farmer’s Affiliation (KAIFA) to convey sustainable farming to the region.

The staff to start with desilted the 565-acre Periyakulam (Big Lake) in Peravurani and restored the waterbody. It is now able of irrigating more than 6,000 acres of land.

“The ground h2o stage in the region improved from 300-400 ft to forty ft. I believed if 3 months of effort and hard work can clear up a long time of h2o problem, why not replicate it to other h2o bodies in the region,” Raghavan mentioned.

Lake rejuvenation

Nowadays, the KAIFA staff, which has spread its routines across Thanjavur, Thiruvarur, Nagapattinam, Pudukkottai and Sivangagai districts, is operating on its 95th lake rejuvenation job. Every single job entails planning the supply channel, desilting of the h2o bodies, rising the depth of the lake, strengthening of boundaries and building a little island of indigenous trees at the centre of the lake.

The Kaifa staff, alongside with the area neighborhood aid, has planted 650,000 tree saplings until day.

Raghavan credits his school seniors Karthikeyan Velsamy and Naveen Anandhan as the pillar of aid behind this movement apart from other friends like Prabhakar, Thanga Kannan and Suresh Arumugam. He also lauded the generosity of company donors, neighborhood participation and aid from the area govt.

“I came to know about his do the job from a You Tube movie. I also experienced a dialogue with Nimal and other customers of the Kaifa staff.

“Their vision seems to be promising. We have ideas to do the job with them in some sites,” Thanjavur district collector Dinesh Ponraj Oliver mentioned.