Heavy rain ruins green gram crop due to excessive May rain

COIMBATORE: Farmers, who sowed green gram in Nadupalayam village, have nothing to celebrate after they registered a massive crop failure this year.
According to the agriculture department officials, who visited these farms, the excessive rainfall in May and June led to the dire situation.
A gloom settled over farmers of Nadupalayam, which is 25km from Pappampatti Pirivu, after their crops failed to sprout pods.These pods contain the mung beans which when harvested is dried, roasted and sold as green gram in the market.
N Bhoopathy, 50, who owns a four-acre farm in Nadupalayam, had sown green gram in the first week of May. Despite majority of the crops growing to its full potential, no pods were sprouted in most of them.
"It is important for the crops sprout pods. Otherwise, we cannot harvest the mung beans," said the farmer, who has been cultivating green gram for over three decades in his land. Bhoopathy, who in fact bought the seeds from the agriculture department in the Sulur Panchayat Union office, said "I did not do anything different this season, but the harvest has failed on a massive scale."
Another farmer in the area, N Ramasamy who cultivated green gram in his 1.25-acre farm said, "No pods sprouted in my farm either," he said. Both farmers have lost upto 5,000 per acre -- the investment made for the seeds, fertilizers, pesticides and labour. "We hope it sells for cattle fodder atleast," he added.
According to them, farmers in Appanaickenpattipudhur in the district saw only 50% of sprouting in their farmlands. However, those who sowed Black-eyed peas and Urud Dal did not record any major loss.
The assistant director of agriculture department in Sulur panchayat office, Jayashree, who inspected these farms, said, "We found that many farms, including Bhoopathy's, saw only a 30% crop yield and so we asked two TNAU scientists to discover what brought about the failure this year."
According to these scientists, the heavy unseasonal rain in May led to water stagnation in many of these farms, she said. "Extra manure was piled up in the land and had gotten mixed with the rain water and the lack of sunlight facilitated vegetation to grow between the sown seeds that used up most of the nutrients. And this led to the crop failure," she said.
Many other parts of the district have registered a good green gram yield, she added.