Coimbatore : Farmers across 20 districts in Tamil Nadu Tuesday started planting 1.26 lakh saplings in memory of ‘Maram’ (tree) Thangasamy Aiya, a passionate farmer and ardent l environmentalist best known for planting lakhs of trees in the State during his lifetime.

The planting program is Cauvery Calling’s tribute to one of Tamil Nadu’s most well respected farmers and Arignar Anna award recipient, who died on September 17, two years ago.

The event began in Senthakudi village in Pudhukkottai to mark the day where his son Thanga Kannan participated as Chief Guest.

Saplings are being planted across 45 locations in a total of 331 acres of land in:
pudhukkottai, Thanjavur, Thiruvarur, Coimbatore, Salem, Tirupur, Vellore, Madurai, and Kanniyakumari among others Tuesday and Wednesday.

Farmers will plant a minimum of 450 trees and a maximum of 15,000 trees on their farmlands, mostly high-value timber trees that will improve their economic condition and also enhance soil health and groundwater tables.

Farmers have already lifted the saplings from Isha Nurseries and volunteers from Cauvery Calling will visit the farmers’ lands and provide technical advice during the tree planting event.

In this first planting season since the launch of Cauvery calling last year, farmers in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka have planted 83 lakh saplings on their farmlands in the river basin.

Cauvery Calling will enable over 5 million farmers to plant 2.42 billion trees on their farmlands over a 12-year period. The high-value trees will be planted on private farmlands in the river basin.

Cauvery Calling promotes tree-basedbagriculture, an economically remunerative
model of farming which has a significant ecological impact. Isha has worked with over 70,000 farmers over the last 15 years to assist them in adopting tree-based agriculture. These farmers have reported an increase in their income between 3 and 5 times in 5-7 years.