Delta farmers have urged the State government to release water from the Stanley Reservoir, Mettur, and to exert pressure on the Karnataka government to release Tamil Nadu’s share of water to save the standing ‘samba’ crop in delta districts.
Although the shutters of Mettur dam were closed mid-cultivation season, farmers managed to cultivate ‘samba’ crop with the available water and because of rain. The standing crop needs to be irrigated with sufficient water. However, since the rain, which helped farmers tide over the crisis, had stopped, they were dependent on irrigation at places where groundwater was available, said P.R. Pandian, president, Coordination Committee of All Farmers Associations of Tamil Nadu, and G. Srinivasan, a progressive farmer of Ganapathi Agraharam in Papanasam taluk in Thanjavur district.
This being the situation, the State government should release water from Mettur for at least a week and press Karnataka government to release Tamil Nadu’s due share of water in the Cauvery to save the standing crop in the districts of Thanjavur, Nagapattinam, Tiruvarur and Mayiladuthurai, they added.
Regretting that water had not been released into the Therkku Rajan Vaikal (irrigation channel) in Mayiladuthurai, Mr. Pandian said that the crop raised in the areas fed by the channel had started withering for want of water.
Pest attack
Meanwhile, reports of pest attack on standing “samba” crop had emerged from different parts of delta districts.
Though the Agriculture Department and agriculture institutes had alerted farmers about such attacks and prescribed steps to be taken to minimise the impact on the standing crop, farmers such as Raman of Tiruvarur said the inability to maintain the water level on the fields had compounded the problem.
