The Hindu Business Line : Alarm over shrinking paddy acreage in Kerala

IN a State, which depends on other States for three-fourth of its rice requirement, paddy fields are being reclaimed for non-agricultural activities reducing further the rice production apart from damaging the environment and ecological balance.

As a result, the total area under paddy cultivation, which was eight lakh hectares in 1967, has now come down to mere three lakh hectares, official sources said.

This has happened despite the fact that permission is granted to reclaim paddy fields only to those having no houses to convert five cents of land for constructing houses under the State Land Utilisation Act of 1967, they said.

The latest incident of reclamation of paddy fields on a large-scale has come to the light in Aranmula village in the Pathanamthitta district where over 100 acres of wetland (Punja) has been bought by a private trust and reclamation started. This has evoked protests from environmental activists leading to stoppage of reclamation activities.

The Trust claims to have bought more paddy fields in two other panchayats also for reclamation. The wetland in the Pampa river basin has been bought for setting up a "multipurpose airstrip" by this Turst, which has a self-financing Engineering College in the district.

Paddy fields are the wetland system existing in the river basin which is known as the "flood plain areas", Mr N.K. Sukumaran Nair, General Secretary, Pampa Parirakshana Samiti, told Business Line.

He said that these flood plain areas are the natural rainwater reservoirs, which conserve rain-water and help recharge the rivers and wells in the region. When these wetlands are reclaimed such natural rainwater reservoirs would disappear and that in turn would destroy the ecological balance apart from depriving the people of drinking water in the summer months.

Already the district is in the grip of acute shortage of potable water following indiscriminate sand mining from the rivers and reclamation of paddy fields in other parts of the district, he alleged.

The State produces only around 7 lakh tonnes of rice i.e., one-fourth of its annual requirement of an estimated 30 lakh tonnes.

The high pressure of population beyond the carrying capacity of the land, coupled with a cropping system traditionally oriented towards cash crops, contributed to its being a food deficit state from the very beginning, senior official sources pointed out.

The area and production of rice, which was steadily increasing till the mid-seventies had to succumb to economic pressure emanating from other remunerative crops resulted in the decline of more than six lakh hectares of land under paddy cultivation during the last three decades, they said.

In addition, reclamation for other commercial activities, residential purposes and constructing criss-cross roads, which had not only brought down the area under the crop but also destroyed the ecological balance in the river basin, especially in Kuttanadu, the environmentalists pointed out.

Meanwhile, the State Agriculture Minister, Ms K.R. Gowri, said in the Assembly recently that firm steps would be taken to implement the Land Utilisation Act and check the conversion of paddy fields after receiving the report of a Committee headed by the Land Use Commissioner set up for studying the issue.

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