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Coimbatore
TN food secretary inspects crops to assess ground reality
November 27, 2016
Thanjavur: Pradeep Yadav, Principal Secretary, Food, Cooperation and Consumer Protection Department, who is also the monitoring officer for Thanjavur district, visited and inspected the agricultural fields affected by drought in the district today to assess the ground reality.
The principal secretary also heard the grievances of the affected farmers on the occasion. Collector A Annadurai and officials of the revenue and agriculture department accompanied the food secretary.
Pradeep Yadav visited and inspected agricultural fields in Soorakkottai, Mela Uloor, Chokkanavoor, Kannanthangudi and Aravakurichi villages. The farmers in these areas told him that they had raised paddy crops after spending a lot of money with the hope to have a bumper harvest but the crops had wilted and fields had developed cracks due to non-availability of water for irrigation, they said.
Balakrishnan (55), a farmer from Soorakkottai village, claimed that he owned eight acres of land and had raised nurseries on it but these went dry due to non-availability of water, forcing him to let his cattle graze on the dried nurseries. Another farmer, Mathiazhagan (43), claimed that he had raised paddy crops in three acres of land but the crops had wilted. They also claimed that several farmers had died or committed suicide in depression in the delta districts after their crops failed.
Official sources claimed that the monitoring officer had visited and inspected the agricultural fields to assess the ground reality as a critical situation had arisen for farmers following failure of their crops. The principal secretary would send his report to the state government.
Earlier, Pradeep Yadav conducted a review meeting at the Collectorate in Thanjavur. Collector Annadurai, Additional Director of Agriculture (in-charge) K Nedunchezhiyan, Joint Director of Agriculture R Krishnakumar, Collector’s Personal Assistant (Agriculture) T Chokkalingam, Deputy Director of Agriculture (Seed) Eswar, DRDA project director Manthrachalam, DRO P Chandrasekaran and others participated.
