Thanks to the farm ponds scheme initiated last year by the State Government, dovetailing the Centre’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, a total of 1,000 agricultural fields owned by small and medium-scale cultivators in Erode district are now endowed with water bodies that assure water availability during the hot months ahead.
After the Agriculture Department identified the beneficiary farmers, the Rural Development Department got into deploying hundreds of farm labourers to dig up the ponds under MNREGS.
With the District Collector as chairman and Joint Director of Agriculture the Project Director, the scheme holds promise to the farmers.
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Farmers covered under the scheme are now in a position to sustain their agricultural through the hot summer months, Joint Director of Agriculture M. Selvaraj said.
This time around, farmers in the LBP (Lower Bhavani Project) ayacut are safe owing to copious monsoon rain. There is enough storage in the Bhavani Sagar Dam for six schedules of special wettings to raise dry crops. The ponds have been constructed at spots in the fields where the run off water from the rain accumulates. The long-term advantage is perennial recharge of acquifer, agriculture officials say. According to farmers, the ponds are also useful for meeting the drinking water requirement of cattle, and has opened up scope for fish farming.