The farmers have stopped raising arecanut trees in Belur in the district, thanks to the repeated drought conditions for the past one decade and steep fall of price for arecanuts.
The farmers have raised arecanut groves in large areas in Salem, Namakkal, Coimbatore, Dharmapuri and Villupuram districts. Tamil Nadu accounted for 10 per cent of the total arecanut production in the country. Salem is the major arecanut production centres in Tamil Nadu, registering 40 per cent of the total production in the state.
The farmers of wet lands of Pethanayakkanpalayam, Ayodhyapattanam, Narasingapuram, Yethapur, Karumanthurai, Thammampatti, Gangavalli etc have raised arecanut trees in about 5,000 hectares.
For creating arecanut farms, farmers have to initially maintain the arecaunut plants for three years in a shaded area. Since the arecanut trees can yield for more than three decades, the farmers take utmost care in their proper watering and maintenance. The farmers plant fresh seedlings beneath the died down trees.
Monsoon has repeatedly failed in Salem district for the past one decade, due to which the farmers find it difficult to protect the trees by proper watering. Moreover the price of arecanuts too has repeatedly slumped in the markets causing much financial loss to the farmers.
The farmers, of late have stopped raising the arecanut trees. If the present drought situation continued for a couple of more years, the district will be bereft of arecanut groves, lamented A. Rukmini, a farmer of Kurichi village near Belur.
A cross section of the arecanut farmers have demanded the government to provide adequate compensation and also pave way for perennial water supply for their groves.
