Climate change-spurred unseasonal rain has dashed Vipin Vijayakumar's dreams of striking gold cultivating paddy at his village in Thakazhi in Kuttanad.
COVID-19 had cost Vijayakumar his job as an aircraft maintenance engineer in Kuwait in 2020. On his return, Vijayakumar and three friends leased a vast expanse of arable wetland (375 acres) to cultivate rice. However, disaster struck twice. Floods washed away a sizeable part of the harvest in September 2021. Unforeseeable intense summer rain dealt Vijayakumar's prospects as a paddy cultivator a death blow in April this year.
"We invested ₹80 lakh to turn the wetland into a lush rice field. Rain struck on the eve of the harvest season. I have to seek a job in the Gulf to redeem the debt", he told The Hindu.
Kerala's lush green fields in Kuttanad seem to stretch into the horizon. Nevertheless, it appears to conceal an arguably unending agrarian misery beneath the strikingly verdant green.
Vipin Babu, secretary, Nattayam Padasekhara Samithi, says climate change-resilient farming is the future. “Climate change has upended rainfall patterns. Farming is finished if authorities do not ensure that Kuttanad drains properly into the sea. Clogged waterways and silted canals cause flooded rice fields,” he says.
Lack of storage, dearth of mechanised harvesters and threshing machines, spiralling fertilizer price, shortage of farm labour, punishing debt accumulated over the years from crop failures, low yield and plummeting produce price, shoddy paddy procurement, depression and livelihood worries threaten to swamp rice farmers in Kuttanad.
The recent suicide of a paddy farmer, Rajeev, in the region is an alarming reminder of the crisis facing Kuttanad.
K. Anil Kumar, a paddy farmer in Thiruvarppu, in Kottayam, faces Vijayakumar's predicament. Significant crop loss to unseasonal rain has driven him to despair.
"It's a vicious cycle from which there seems to be no escape. Crop loss is on the rise every passing year," he said.
Preliminary estimates by the Department of Agriculture suggested that the farming sector in Kottayam and Pathanamthitta sustained damages worth over ₹21. 58 crore and ₹1.37 crore from April 1 to 11.
But with more downpour in the offing and continued waterlogging of fields, officials say these figures are just a fraction of the actual loss sustained by farmers. Farmers are demanding subsidies for adopting modern climate-resilient modes of farming. They also want a robust and real-time crop Insurance scheme to stave off crippling debt traps.
Rural misery is also shaping up as the next battlefront between the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government and the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) opposition.
It also poses a thorny political and economic challenge to the government. The Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) has slammed the government for "according zero priority to agriculture". It has accused the government of being obsessed with K-Rail at the cost of traditional sectors.
If not addressed with alacrity, another hard season of agrarian distress could be on Kuttanad's horizon.
