The Hindu Business Line : Farming activity hit in TN

Harvest woes
In many places, the labour shortage forced the farmers to skip harvesting for a few weeks thereby putting the ripened crop in peril. The delayed harvest of crop like tapioca had often led to the loss of starch content thereby leaving the farmers incurring value-loss for their produce.

Coimbatore , March 26

The extraordinarily good monsoon late last year and better irrigation conditions have aided the farmers this year to look for a sumptuous crop yield. But these favourable conditions have also led to difficulties for the farmers at the harvesting time in the form of acute shortage of labour and the resultant high labour wages in Tamil Nadu.

Non-availability of adequate farm labour to harvest the ripened crops in time had been the singular factor that marked the farming scene in Tamil Nadu during January-February this year when bulk of the popular food/cash crops such as paddy, sugarcane and tapioca came up for harvesting.

According to Mr C. Vaiyapuri, President of the Athur-based United Farmers Association of Tamil Nadu, sugarcane farmers in Erode and Salem had to pay anywhere between Rs 200 and Rs 300 per tonne for cutting and loading sugarcane this year against the average wage of Rs 150 to Rs 175 in the previous harvest season.

In the case of tapioca, farmers paid Rs 9/Rs 10 as plucking wages per bag (75 kg) of tubers as compared to Rs 6 in the previous year. In many places, the labour shortage forced the farmers to skip harvesting for a few weeks thereby putting the ripened crop in peril. The delayed harvest of crop like tapioca had often led to the loss of starch content thereby leaving the farmers incurring value-loss for their produce, he said.

Enlarged crop area, made possible this year by the flush ground-water conditions, and limited availability of migratory labour, many of whom had failed to return to farming work from urban centres unlike in the previous years, had left the farmers inSalem, Erode high and dry.Mr Vaiyapur told Business Line that the busy industrial and building construction activities in urban centres to which most of the rural/farm labour migrate during non-peak farming period remained far too active throughout the year and prevented majority of the migrant labour returning to to help out in harvesting.

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