Farmers fume over wild elephant raids

Coimbatore: Farmers from Karamadai block here on Thursday raised concerns over frequent elephant raids in their agriculture fields and urged concerned officials to compensate them adequately for their losses. In the latest such raid, a herd of elephants entered a banana field at Kandipudur on the early hours of Thursday and damaged around 500 plants cultivated in two acres.
The farmers said the damaged robusta variety of banana plants were ready for harvest. Pointing out that each plant would yield around 200 fruits, A S Babu, president of farmers’ association, said they would fetch anywhere between Rs 600 and Rs 700.

“Even a robusta sapling costs Rs 150. But when they are damaged, farmers are offered only Rs 50-Rs 100 per tree. This is when the total value of damaged crop would be around Rs 4 lakh. We want the government to properly assess the damages and provide the prevailing market price as compensation,” he said.

The farmers, meanwhile, threatened to stage a demonstration at Kanuvaipalayam by dumping the damaged crop on road, if officials did not hold talks with them.

Following this, forest and agriculture officials, along with tahsildar, held talks with the farmers. A forest official said the farmers had demanded compensation on the spot, but it was not possible as they had to assess the damage and submit a report to the treasury. “We assured them that they would get the compensation according to the norms.” tnn