As farmers overwhelmingly responded to ‘Farm ponds’, the state government has sanctioned funds for digging 4,000 more farm ponds this year for the benefit of farmers on private patta lands.
Announcing this at the farmers’ grievance redressal meeting here on Friday, Collector K Nanthakumar said interested farmers could submit applications for digging farm ponds in their patta lands.
He said the ponds would be created by involving the workers employed under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme under the back end subsidy model and the government has sanctioned Rs.50,000 per pond.
After the MGNREGA workers did the initial digging work, the Rural Development and Agriculture Engineering departments would complete the works, he said adding 1,500 farm ponds were dug up last year under this model.
After the harvest, farmers could apply for farm ponds to the Assistant Directors of Agriculture department in their respective areas, so that the work could be started in February, the Collector said.
This year, farmers received good rains during both the south west and north east monsoons but the farm ponds came to the rescue of many farmers when the district faced drought in the last two years, Mr Z Kamaldeen, Deputy Director, District Watershed Development Agency (DWDA) said.
Detailing the agency’s performance last year, he said it has dug up 110 new farm ponds in the blocks of Kadaladi, Kamudhi, Mudukulathur, RS Mangalam and Nainarkoil and provided Capacity building training to 1,564 farmers. The agency has also renovated tanks and planted more than one lakh saplings of fruit trees on the banks, he said. Besides, the agency has renovated 296 Ooranis, 64 Kanmais and 93 supply channels, he said presenting an audio-visual.
The renovated Ooranis included those in Naranamangalam and Erwadi. Both became garbage dumping yards and now presented a great picture with pure water, he said.
To help the farmers to augment their income, the Agency distributed fingerlings to be grown in farm ponds on an experiment basis in the watershed areas in the district, Mr. Kamaldeen said. It gave revolving fund of Rs.27,000 each to 628 self-help groups, he added.
