Bring back pokkali farming, says Minister

Agriculture Minister V.S. Sunil Kumar has said that there was a need to bring back the traditional pokkali cultivation, a saline tolerant variety of rice, to the paddy fields.

Speaking after inaugurating an outer bund for the pokkali fields of Puthenthodu and Kuzhuvelithodu, he said there was an effort to bring the curtains on paddy cultivation citing losses. The government will not issue licences for fish farming in pokkali fields unless pokkali rice was cultivated alternately.