Farmers across 20 districts in Tamil Nadu will plant 1.26 lakh saplings over the next two days in memory of Maram Thangasamy Aiya, a passionate farmer and ardent environmentalist best known for planting lakhs of trees in Tamil Nadu during his lifetime. The planting program is said to be Cauvery Calling’s tribute to one of Tamil Nadu’s most well respected farmers.
An event will be held in his village Pudhukkottai to mark the day where Maram Thangasamy Aiya’s son Shri. Kannan will participate as Chief Guest. Saplings will be planted across 45 locations in a total of 331 acres of land in: Pudhukkottai, Thanjavur, Thiruvarur, Kovai, Salem, Tirupur, Vellore, Madurai, and Kanniyakumari among others.
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. 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 is said to promote tree-based agriculture and an economically remunerative model of farming by enabling over 5 million farmers located along the Cauvery basin to plant 2.42 billion high-value trees on their farmlands over a 12-year period.
So far, Isha is said to have worked with over 70,000 farmers over the last 15 years to assist them in adopting tree-based agriculture. These farmers have reportedly seen an increase in their income between 3 and 5 times in 5-7 years.