Tamil Nadu’s Cauvery delta has grown rice for millennia but environmental alarm bells warn that the days might be numbered for large-scale rice cultivation. Within a few decades, intensive farming practices have changed almost everything about the region, with potentially irreversible consequences. It has ramped up water use even as the Cauvery river dispute choked off water supplies. The delta is almost sucked dry now and its soil is stripped of nutrients. Nutritious native varieties that kept the soil and the people farming it healthy have all but disappeared.
Cauvery delta, South India’s largest delta, is crucial for Tamil Nadu’s food security. This is the third part of a series of reports on rice cultivation in the region by Navya PK and explores solutions.
Veeramani N, a farmer in Mayiladuthurai district, grows three native paddy varieties in a part of his paddy farm, all renowned for their medicinal properties. One of them is Karuppu Kavuni, a diabetic-friendly black rice variety that sells at record prices in Chennai now.
Part 1 and part 2 of this investigation revealed that delta farmers are facing a calamity: their groundwater is running out and their soil is depleted by the intensive farming of high-yielding paddy varieties since the Green Revolution. In contrast, native rice varieties need less water and no chemical inputs. They are good for consumers and the land, and fetch higher prices for farmers now.
Veeramani says his profits from native and high-yielding paddy varieties are comparable, at around Rs 20,000 per acre. But this retired school headmaster says a mild, steadfast ‘no’ when asked if he would expand his native rice cultivation.
Since the Covid years, the demand for native varieties have shot up in urban India due to their nutritional benefits, but delta farmers face many challenges in tapping into this market. So, most farmers believe native variety farming would be loss-making, or at least risky, and continue to grow high-yielding varieties that have pushed the region into the brink of ecological collapse.
To understand why farmers like Veeramani are saying no to native varieties, we investigated what drove their decline over the years and how the government’s poor understanding of the high ecological stakes, shoddy recordkeeping and insufficient investment in cultivating a viable market for local varieties are preventing a large scale shift to crops that offer one of the very few potential routes to saving water, restoring the soil and ultimately, saving livelihoods .
Native rice farming remains marginal in the delta
After the Green Revolution introduced the monocropping of high-yielding paddy varieties in the delta, native rice varieties nearly disappeared. The area under these varieties is still marginal.
Of the seven rice-growing delta districts we are analysing – Thanjavur, Thiruvarur, Nagapattinam, Mayiladuthurai, Tiruchirappalli, Pudukkottai and Cuddalore – only two grow native varieties now, according to the state government’s Season and Crop Report, 2022-23. But in these two districts too, they occupy less than 1% of the paddy farming area, according to official statistics.
Government doesn’t have accurate data on local varieties
While local variety cultivation is indeed marginal in the delta, the Season and Crop Reports don’t capture it where it does exist. According to government officials, the form used to collect crop data just is not designed for this. That is, despite the state government’s recently-launched mission to promote native rice varieties, it has no accurate data on their current or historical cultivation.
In Thanjavur and Cuddalore, this reporter found farmers’ collectives growing local varieties. Similarly, Mayiladuthurai grows them in nearly 4,000 ha, or 3% of its paddy farming area, according to an officer at the office of the district’s Joint Director (Agriculture). But as per the Season and Crop Reports, none of these districts grow native varieties.
The state government’s Economics and Statistics Department publishes the report based on the revenue department’s annual records reconciliation. An official in the Statistics Department says the adangal form, in which the Revenue Department’s Village Administrative Officers (VAOs) collect each farm’s data, has a column to record if the paddy variety is local or high-yielding, but not the variety’s name. “So this data is not collected properly. VAOs have no clarity about which varieties are local. Also, if a farm with high-yielding varieties has a smaller area under local varieties, the latter won’t get recorded,” says the official.
Though the Agriculture Department had written to the revenue and statistics departments to include the names of 37 paddy varieties in the form, there has been no decision on this yet.
Ganesamurthy Muthuswamy, founder of the delta-based company Mudfield Natural Farms that helps farmers grow local rice varieties, says the poor quality of data reflects the government’s disconnect from the ground reality of native variety farming. “The government schemes to promote native variety farming don't cover crucial aspects like the training that farmers need, or research to identify local varieties suited for different parts of the delta.”
Sustainable crops are declining rapidly across Tamil nadu
Like native rice varieties, millets too are nutritious, climate-resilient crops. But both these have declined not just in the delta, but across Tamil Nadu since the Green Revolution.
Only half of Tamil Nadu’s districts grow local rice varieties at all now. Even among them, only Namakkal and Nilgiris grow these in more than 5% of their cropped paddy area. Season and Crop Reports show that the land under these varieties shrank in nearly all districts in the past decade.
Similarly, the area under jowar – the most commonly grown millet in Tamil Nadu – declined in over half the districts last decade, along with bajra, the union agriculture ministry’s data shows. Ragi farming declined in two-thirds of the districts. The decline was seen even in Namakkal and Krishnagiri, the state’s top bajra-growing and ragi-growing districts respectively.
Growing local varieties can improve soil health with less water
Districts that primarily grow millets and native rice varieties fare better than the delta in terms of groundwater, soil nutrition and fertiliser use, our analysis shows. With high-yielding paddy becoming unsustainable, the state government itself has asked delta farmers to switch to less water-thirsty crops. But the government did not set up the support systems for this transition, and hence not much has changed, according to officials and experts.
Since the area under local rice variety cultivation is small in Tamil Nadu, we used millets as a proxy for them in our analysis, given millets’ low water and fertiliser requirement. We compared four districts that grow the highest proportion of millets and local rice varieties in their farm area – Namakkal, Karur, Dindigul and Krishnagiri – with the delta districts. (Though a part of Karur is in the delta, it grows more millet than paddy.)
The results show these districts use less nitrogen- and potassium-based fertilisers than most delta districts. No such trend was apparent in the case of phosphorus-based fertilisers though. (Nagapattinam and Mayiladuthurai reported combined values in 2021-22, so our calculation uses a best estimate for these two districts.)
Besides, millet-growing areas have better soil zinc levels than delta districts.
Millet is also more water efficient. Except Karur, these districts also use less groundwater per hectare of cropped area than the delta’s top water-guzzlers, Pudukkottai, Tiruchirappalli and Thanjavur. For example, Namakkal which tops in millet/local paddy farming, uses a third less groundwater per hectare of its cropped area than Pudukkottai and Tiruchirappalli, and a fourth less than Thanjavur.
Sethuraman, a delta farmer, explains that Karur’s high groundwater use despite being a millet-growing district, is because of its partly rocky terrain preventing Cauvery water from seeping down. “Millets are rainfed here, but many other crops depend on groundwater,” he says.
Too many hurdles, no government support, for farmers growing native varieties
Despite their low yield, local rice varieties can fetch good profits for farmers owing to their high market prices and low farming costs. But the few delta farmers who grow native rice varieties are on their own. They have no safety net of the MSP that high-yielding paddy farmers have, or other government support for marketing or transporting rice. They also get no training or information, or the benefits of a foolproof organic certification system.
Their biggest challenge is finding a buyer for local varieties. Farmer Veeramani, quoted earlier, says his only option is to sell native varieties to his local contacts at low rates. He sells Karuppu Kavuni (a variety of black rice) at Rs 120 per kg, which is about half its market price of Rs 200 in Chennai. He doesn’t want to risk expanding native variety cultivation in the absence of marketing channels, and relies more on high-yielding varieties grown in the rest of his farm.
Despite the risks, a small proportion of delta farmers do exclusively grow native varieties, inspired by legendary green crusaders like Nammazhvar and Nel Jayaraman. Ashok Kumar, one such subsistence farmer, has always grown drought-resistant native varieties at his farm in water-starved coastal Nagapattinam. His farm is entirely rainfed and uses no chemical inputs. But instead of getting support for eco-friendly farming, he pays a penalty—he earns only Rs 1600 for a 60-kg bag of paddy, way lower than the market rate.
Some organic farmers have benefited by organising and supporting each other in the absence of government support. Chidambaram Alluvial Area Agro Products (CAAAP), one such three-year-old farmer collective in Cuddalore, has developed a system to train their members, market their rice through social media, and ensure a minimum price of Rs 2000 per bag, more than what Kumar makes. But these collectives face an uphill battle in setting up these systems on their own. And the majority of native variety farmers, like Kumar, work isolated and unorganised amidst large swathes of high-yielding paddy farms.
Local rice varieties also have higher processing and transport costs. While the government procures high-yielding paddy directly, local varieties fetch better prices when processed into rice. But they have to be processed in separate mills, often far away from farms, which increases farmers’ costs. Transporting rice to individual consumers in distant locations is also challenging. Muthuswamy of Mudfield Natural Farms, quoted earlier, says they are unable to serve 15% of their prospective buyers who call from rural areas since parcel services don’t deliver there.
Not surprisingly then, farmers who grow high-yielding paddy are reluctant to grow native varieties.
Besides, some farmers who tried growing native varieties have given up because they can’t afford to allow their fields to lay fallow during the transition. To do organic farming, the land should be left free for at least two years to let it recover from chemicals, says Thanjavur farmer M Thennilavan. This isn’t feasible for him.
Marketing local varieties locally and abroad
Distinguishing local varieties is another challenge for organic farmers. Muthuswamy says customers in supermarkets often can’t differentiate between Karuppu Kavuni and look-alike hybrid varieties that are less nutritious but cheaper by Rs 30-50 per kg. “Hybrids are cheaper because of their short cropping season and low processing cost. Their processing cost is around Rs 10 per kg, whereas ours is Rs 25 as we have to use a mill 50 km away.” He says customers don’t trust organic certification since fake certification is common.
Native rice varieties have a market abroad too, but farmers can capitalise on this only if there is good recordkeeping and traceability of the rice to specific farms, says Dr K Ramaswamy, former member of the State Planning Commission and former vice chancellor of Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU). Other than native rice, farmers in pockets of the delta are already growing other crops like pulses and vegetables, and these too can become popular if there is government support in terms of MSP, marketing or logistics, he adds.
Government programmes fall short
Though the state and central governments each launched a scheme in recent years to promote traditional rice varieties, farmers said they misdiagnosed the problem and so did not provide the support needed to make local varieties viable.
Since 2022, the state government has been distributing native paddy seeds under the Nel Jayaraman Traditional Paddy Varieties Conservation Mission. And the union government’s Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana gives Rs 5000 per ha, for up to two ha, to farmers growing local rice varieties. But both schemes don’t address farmers’ main challenges relating to farming support, marketing and logistics. Farmers also complain that these scheme benefits are negligible compared to what high-yielding paddy farmers get, and that agriculture department officials often cover ineligible people under these schemes so as to meet their implementation targets.
K Suresh Kumar, founder of CAAAP, says they don’t expect benefits from schemes “as the government has no clarity on organic farming. We are now building a network of organic farmers across Tamil Nadu, so that we will have data and can make demands to the government.”
Meanwhile, TNAU, which plays a major role in the state government’s agriculture policymaking, continues to develop newer high-yielding varieties. Dr M Raveendran, Director of Research at TNAU, says the low yield of native varieties would affect food security. However, India’s rice production is in surplus, its annual rice exports are increasing, and Tamil Nadu too contributes to the exports.
He adds that TNAU now supports a couple of startups focusing on traditional rice varieties through its agribusiness incubation centres, helping them grow the varieties and linking them to the market.
Food policy analyst Devinder Sharma says the most crucial aspect is giving a fair price to farmers who shift to organic farming, based on the UN’s The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) approach. He gives the example of Himachal Pradesh, which has developed a supply chain for organic maize and aims to do the same for paddy.
Sharma is optimistic that organic farming will grow in India: “Globally, the demand for organic food is the highest in India. If nothing happens for the next 20 years, that would mean the consumers have failed.” Since 34% of greenhouse gas emissions come from industrial farming, including rice, governments will be forced to act too, he believes.
If the current scenario doesn’t change, the Cauvery delta will soon end up like the Krishna delta in Andhra Pradesh, says economist and water expert Dr Janakarajan. “There, agriculture is almost dead, and industrialisation is happening. Prawn culture for exports is also threatening the ecosystem. There’s land subsidence, and the groundwater is 100% saline,” he says. “Above all, my biggest worry about Cauvery delta is food security and employment.”
Farmers like Veeramani can perhaps change this course by growing more of local paddy or other less water-thirsty crops. But, only systemic changes by the government can make it possible.
(Reporting for this story was supported by the Environmental Data Journalism Academy - a programme of Internews’ Earth Journalism Network and Thibi)
View the data analysis conducted for this series, and the methodology used for the analysis.