Life of a dry land farmer
“The tractor standing there is our source of income, not this 10 acres of land” said Arunachalam, a dry land farmer in Kadavur, Karur. Echoes of farmer’s distress, impact of climate change and degrading soil reverberated the lush brown dry land farm covered with white and red cholam cultivated for their cattle.
“Last year we got a meagre yield of 1200 kgs (16 sacks) of paddy in 3 acres of land. We spent over Rs 1 lakhs for the cultivation and got meagre amounts in return. The drumstick cropped in 5 acres failed this year and we had a loss of Rs 1.5–2 lakhs” said Ramajayam, Arunchalam’s son. “We are not even able to support our children’s education with the income from the farm. We are cultivating only to payback the loans that we incurred in farming and caught up in a debt trap.” lamented Arunachalam.
In our journey of studying and documenting dry land farming in Tamil nadu, we stumbled upon a farm with a welcoming cholam (millet crop) in the entrance. We entered the farm with much hope, but each word from the farmer’s family shattered our hope. The degrading soil, low price for agricultural produce, rising labour costs, failing monsoons and climate change, lack of importance to dry land farming in governance and a whole lot of things sums up the agrarian crisis through which our farmers are reeling through.
We have done in-depth coverage and discussion on dry land farming in Tamil Nadu in our Aram Thinai Podcast.
