Unable to sell banana leaves, farmer sets plants on fire

Coimbatore: A Thondamuthur-based banana farmer, who incurred a huge loss due to the lockdown, set fire to the plants on three acres on Wednesday.
M Natarajan, 65, had been selling banana leaves in neighbouring Kerala for the last 30 years. He used to cultivate the Poovan variety on his field in Madhampatti and had planted 6,500 of them.
“I used to collect 1,250 bundles of leaves from an acre. Each bundle would sell for Rs 430. But this year, since the lockdown, there has been no transport between Coimbatore and Kerala and I was not able to sell. Because of this, they became wasted,” he said.
“I was planning to collect fibre from the trees and sell it to the traders in the flower market for stringing garlands. This could have earned around Rs 10,000 from an acre. But as the flower sector has also been hit, flower merchants were not ready to take the fibre, even for free,” Natarajan told TOI.
As there was no business for the last three months, he decided to get rid of the trees. “If I employ people to chop the trees, I have to pay them. Instead, I burnt the trees down. I have incurred a loss of more than Rs 3lakh.”