A Haywire Harvest: For the paddy farmers of Tamil Nadu, this year’s Pongal is going to be less sweet

Incessant rains, a soggy harvest and no sunshine cast a damper on the preparations for the four-day harvest festival of Pongal in Tamil Nadu, as farmers witness first hand the adverse impact of climate change

Sreedevi Lakshmi Kutty
| Updated: January 14th, 2021

Untimely rains have played havoc with paddy harvesting in the southern state. Photo: JayaKumar

Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu 

The mood is bleak rather than festive as it traditionally should be at this time of the year in Tamil Nadu as the farming community prepares for Pongal, the four-day harvest festival that starts today on January 14. 

Every year, farmers across the state celebrate the harvest with gusto as freshly harvested rice along with lentils and jaggery and flavoured with cardamom is cooked in earthenware pots out in the fields. As the pongal froths up and overflows from the pot, a jubilant cheer of pongal o pongal goes up, and the farming community sends up grateful thanks for a bountiful harvest. 

This year, the cheers will be muted and the jubilation a little less hearty as untimely rains have played havoc with paddy harvesting in the southern state. 

“We are not doing anything special for Pongal, only Mattu pongal (thanksgiving for the cattle that helps the farmer) will be celebrated. We are just waiting for the rains to get over and get the harvest done,” G Jayakumar, a farmer from Mayiladuthurai near Sirkazhi in the Kaveri Delta, about 250 kilometres from the state capital, Chennai, told Gaon Connection.

The rains have cast a gloom on paddy farmers in the southern state. Photo: Adhappan

The 41-year-old owns 20 acres (eight hectares) of paddy land, all organically cultivated and usually has about 30 tonnes of paddy to sell during the Samba season. The major paddy cropping season of Tamil Nadu, dependent on the north east monsoon, is Samba that starts in August and ends in December/January.

He is frustrated because as an organic farmer he has his regular customers who have asked for specific quantities of different varieties of rice — Kichadi Samba, Jeeraga Samba, Karuppu Kavuni and others. “I will not be able to meet their demands in full either. These weather events are becoming too frequent and unpredictable, making our livelihoods very precarious,” he said. 

Relentless rains

The rains have cast a gloom on paddy farmers in the district. “The rains should have stopped with Karthigai deepam. Karthigai comes around the beginning of December, and the north east monsoon ends with Karthigai or if it continues, stops latest by fifteenth of December. This year the rains were delayed and it is still raining a month after it should have stopped,” Jayakumar said. 

According to the rainfall data of the India Meteorological Department, between December 31 last year and January 6 this year, except one district, which received ‘excess’ rainfall, all the other districts of Tamil Nadu have received large excess rainfall. For instance, Kanchipuram district has received 1,834 per cent above normal rainfall between December 31-January 6 week. Villupuram has received 1,840 per cent above normal rainfall in the same time period. The rainfall is expected to go on till the 17th of January, well after Pongal. 

The farmers are desperate, most have taken loans for the season and the sight of their crop being ruined and their income disappearing right in front of their eyes is heart-rending. Photo: Adhappan

The paddy farmers need at least three to four sunny, rain-free days before they can start preparing the kalam (a rammed-earth courtyard for curing paddy). Without getting the kalam ready they can’t go into harvest, which they are planning for the last week of January.

In a press release, PR Pandian, president of the Coordination Committee of All Farmers Associations of Tamil Nadu, said that 10 lakh acres of the samba crop in the delta region and 25 lakh acres across Tamil Nadu were submerged. According to a report Pandian had appealed to the government to give the farmers Rs 30,000 an acre compensation. 

Jayakumar’s estimate is that he will lose around 40 per cent of his usual 30 tonnes yield in the Samba season. The soggy fields will lead to 20 per cent loss when the harvesters are used and he expects another 20 per cent yield loss due to the untimely rains. The seeds will sprout in the field but it is of no use to them as this is not the season and they will just have to plough the saplings back into the soil.

Double expenditure

The time taken to harvest will also double, adding to the cost of renting the harvester, as the machines are likely to get bogged down in the mud, said Jayakumar. It costs Rs 2,800 to rent a harvester for an hour and it would take a farmer anything up to 35 hours to complete harvesting. But under these conditions, the time taken could well be 80 hours to do the same job. 

Wet and soggy fields meant the harvester would go in deep. The farmers would then have to spend more money to level the field using a tractor. Farmers such as Adhappan and Jayakumar are worried about the extra drain on their already strained resources if they have to do that.  

These rains have impacted both short stalked improved varieties and the long stalked traditional varieties of paddy. Photo: Adhappan

Meanwhile, in Pudukottai, Villupuram, Kancheepuram and Tiruvallur districts of Tamil Nadu, harvesting began mid and late December as the paddy was planted slightly earlier than it was in the Kaveri delta due to earlier rains during the sowing. But the situation with those farmers is worse. 

A Adhappan, 54, who leads a large organic farmers group, The Pudukottai Organic Farmers Producer group, consisting of about 1,020 organic farmers, lamented that he could only just watch helplessly as the rains came down. “The paddy, the hay and fields are all soggy and wet, it has ruined everything,” he told Gaon Connection

These organic farmers grow traditional paddy varieties like Thuyamalli, Kichadi Samba, Mappilai Samba, Kattuyanam, Karuppu Kavuni, Milagi Samba, Kothamalli Samba along with a few improved varieties. They believe some of the traditional paddy varieties are climate resilient. But this time the rainfall during harvest has been really terrible for all paddy farmers.

The farmers are desperate, most have taken loans for the season and the sight of their crop being ruined and their income disappearing right in front of their eyes is heart-rending. The group normally manually harvests around 630 tonnes of organic paddy during this season. They are yet to ascertain how much of the paddy they can save this time.

Farmers who managed to harvest, have wet paddy in their sacks; stacks and stacks of it near the kalam, waiting for the sun. The farmer group that Adhappan leads has a large processing facility. Farmers are bringing in half dry or wet paddy since they are unable to dry it near their fields or storage in their homes. Even this is soggy and steaming and they are not sure how much of the paddy will be usable. They are unable to open and check it. 

The farmers in Adhappan’s group are hand harvesting the long stalked varieties. Photo: Adhappan

Normally harvesting and drying is a single continuous exercise. This time around the workers spread the paddy, it rains, they gather the spread paddy into a heap and put a tarpaulin sheet over it and wait for the sky to clear. Again, if the sky clears, the paddy is spread. This has been going on numerous times during the day, every day. The labour cost of drying itself has increased manyfold. 

These rains have impacted both short stalked improved varieties and the long stalked traditional varieties of paddy. Some of the short stalked varieties are completely gone, the harvesters are coming up with mud and rotten paddy stalks with paddy. The rest is rotting in the fields. The farmers in Adhappan’s group are hand harvesting the long stalked varieties that have lodged (where the mature paddy stalks topple over to the ground along with mature seeds). 

The cost of harvesting was much higher due to the difficult conditions. In many fields the paddy sprouted on the stalk, making the crop useless. “Even the straw is rotting, we don’t know what we will feed all the cattle, we are going to experience shortage of cattle feed as well,” said a despairing Adhappan. 

A Himakiran and his fellow farmers in Tiruvallur, Kancheepuram and Villupuram were among the lucky ones. They harvested around December 17th, but still suffered about 25 to 30 per cent losses. Farmers claim the traditional crops do well in the designated pattam (season). But now due to climate change, rain patterns are shifting so unpredictably that the pattam has less meaning. 

“There haven’t been floods or loss of life,” said Adhappan when asked if there would be any support from the government. “Even though the impact has been calamitous, these rains don’t qualify as a calamity,” he explained. “It has been raining with no sign of the sun, there is no respite. We are waiting and hope this stops before our losses mount,” said Adhappan.

Meanwhile, the paddy farmers of Tamil Nadu are experiencing first hand the adverse impact of climate change. It is a reality, not something that is a vague threat in the distant future, they say, as they look at their sodden lands and a Pongal festival with nothing to celebrate.

Sreedevi Lakshmi Kutty is the co-founder of Coimbatore-based Bio Basics, a social venture retailing organic food.