By Prasanth Shanmugasundaram
Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu: Valliyammal Palanisamy (65), a farm labourer from Kuppuchipudur in Anaimalai block of Tamil Nadu’s Coimbatore district, has spent nearly five decades in the fields.
“I’ve been doing farm work since I was 18,” Valliyammal told 101Reporters. “In the past, Anaimalai was filled with paddy and sugarcane fields. Now, it’s just coconut groves,” Back then, from preparing land and sowing to harvesting and storage, we had work almost the whole year. One paddy cycle alone took 130 days, and because farmers grew three crops a year, we worked almost 300 days annually.”
“Even with sugarcane or vegetables, we used to get at least 200 workdays,” she added. “Now, with most of those crops gone, we barely get 10 or 12 days of work a month in coconut fields, mostly weeding or harvesting,” she added.
A whopping 94 per cent decline in workdays, is no easy feat for Valliyammal. When this reporter met her, she was standing knee-deep in a paddy field, pulling out weeds under the harsh afternoon sun. She paused only briefly to drink water before going back to work. “Many of the people I used to work with have left farming,” she said. “Some go for MGNREGS[Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Guarantee Scheme], some for construction, some to textile mills. They don’t come to the fields anymore.”
Her long-time coworker, Karuppathaal, now works in a coir mill twisting ropes and separating fibre from coconut husk. “She earns about Rs 450 a day and works more than 250 days a year,” Valliyammal said. “Rain or shine, people are leaving the fields because there’s simply no work.”
The shift, she said, began when the rain stopped following its old pattern. “We used to plan around the early summer rains in April, then the good showers in August and December. Now there’s no pattern at all. That uncertainty has changed our lives completely.”
What Valliyammal described is unfolding across Tamil Nadu’s Western Zone – Coimbatore, Tiruppur, Erode, Karur, Salem and Namakkal – once major producers of paddy, sugarcane, banana, and vegetables. Today, climate stress, falling rainfall and rising groundwater scarcity are pushing farmers away from water-intensive crops and pulling labourers out of agriculture altogether.
According to the Tamil Nadu Department of Agriculture, the state cultivates 1.21 crore hectares (2.99 crore acres) of oilseeds, pulses, sugarcane, fruits, vegetables, millets and cotton. But in the Western Zone, the last two decades have seen a sharp shift toward long-term plantation crops like coconut and areca nut. These crops need far less labour.
A rural non-farm employment survey shows just how dramatically Tamil Nadu’s workforce has moved out of agriculture: farm employment in surveyed villages has fallen from 43% in 2012 to just 22% in 2024, while non-farm work now accounts for 78% of all rural jobs.
The Western districts lead this shift, with non-farm dependence highest in Coimbatore (50.7%), followed by Tiruppur (42.4%), Namakkal (37.9%), Salem (36.8%), Erode (35.4%), and Karur (29.5%). The income gap explains the migration. Agricultural labourers earn just Rs 37,577 a year, compared to Rs 1.39 lakh in non-farm sectors.
This corresponds with the changing trends in weather observed over the years.
In the last 30 years, rainfall across the Western Zone has declined in every season. India Meteorological Department data shows a 3-12% drop in southwest monsoon rains (June-September), a 3-5% fall in northeast monsoon rains (October-December) and an even sharper 11-28% decline in summer rainfall (March-May).
But the more complex change is unpredictability. Rains that once stretched across months now arrive as short, intense bursts. Some years bring failed monsoons and drought and in others, the rains arrive early or linger too long. The steady two-to-four-month rainy periods of the past now often collapse into a single month.
This instability has hit water-intensive crops the hardest. Between 2000 and 2023, acreage under paddy fell by 55-60%, groundnut by 60-70%, sugarcane by 65-70%, vegetables by 58–60%, and even pulses and small millets by 65-80%. Faced with rising losses, farmers have shifted to long-term plantation crops like coconut and areca nut, which demand far less water and labour.
As a result, coconut cultivation grew by 19.8%, from 1.79 lakh hectares in 2000 to 2.14 lakh hectares in 2023, while areca nut acreage more than doubled, rising 115.5% from 3,828 hectares to 8,248 hectares. Data from the Agriculture Department, Land Use Research Board and the state’s Economic Survey point to the same drivers: erratic rainfall, unreliable canal releases and mounting groundwater stress.
Yet even with this transition, yields remain low and profitability uncertain. Some farmers continue, but many others have quit agriculture altogether, leasing fertile land to factories.
For Pattiswaran (60), a farmer from Anaimalai, the shift away from paddy has been a forced one. “My father and grandfather grew paddy here. Earlier, rainfall and water from the Aliyar Dam supported irrigation for almost 11 months a year through the Ayyakattu canal system. We could grow three paddy crops every year,” he said.
That changed over the last two decades. Rainfall declined sharply, and water releases became irregular. “The Aliyar Dam that once supplied water for 11 months now gives us barely five,” he said. “For four or five months, my land is completely dry. I can grow only one or two crops a year.”
His 20 acres of paddy have shrunk to just 3.5 acres and the rest is now under coconut. “Earlier, sowing followed a clear rhythm, Chithirai in April-May with the first pre-monsoon showers, Aadi in July-August, and Thai in January-February. But climate change has destroyed that calendar. Now no one can say when it will rain.”
Official data shows the same trend. In Anaimalai, paddy cultivation has fallen from 6,400 acres to just 790. Coconut has replaced much of it simply because it is easier to manage. “Coconut doesn’t need water all year. Irrigate it twice a week and it survives. It gives better returns and needs fewer labourers,” he said.
Plantations also tolerate moisture variability better, rely on weekly or fortnightly irrigation, and work well with micro-irrigation, making them far less dependent on perfectly timed monsoons.
This ease of cultivation has spurred the shift to coconut, areca nut and nutmeg.
While the landowners chose this safety net, farm labourers are worse off. Paddy is labour-intensive, each 100-120 day crop cycle needs 5-7 labourers per acre for nursery preparation, transplanting, weeding and harvesting, with workers paid around Rs 300 a day. Coconut and areca nuts, by contrast, require only maintenance and periodic harvests. Additionally, coconut is harvested every 40 days, areca every two months, needing just 1-3 workers per acre for harvesting and 1-2 for weeding.
The shift has slashed labour demand, lowering farmers’ costs while effectively wiping out steady work for thousands of agricultural labourers.
The collapse of steady agricultural work has pushed entire households in Anaimalai to the brink. Anitha (36), a farm worker, told 101Reporters that with the shift in agriculture patterns her family’s income has fallen to a fraction of what it once was. “I never went to school. I’ve worked in the fields since childhood. But now, with the monsoon changing, there is no regular paddy or sugarcane farming. Most fields have become coconut,” she said.
This season, limited water from the Aliyar Dam allowed some farmers to grow paddy, briefly reviving work. “I earn Rs 300 a day in paddy. After harvest, I move to coconut groves for Rs 450. But none of this is regular. My husband is also a farm labourer, together, we get only 10-14 days of work a month,” said Anitha, bent low in the paddy field under the harsh midday sun, planting saplings. Their earnings have to support five people which includes two school-going sons and an elderly mother-in-law.
When the conversation with this reporter ran a little longer, the landowner snapped at Anitha to get back to work. She took a quick sip of water, wiped her face, and hurried back knowing a few minutes lost would reduce her wages.
Anitha lives in a town panchayat, which means she cannot access MGNREGS since the scheme is restricted to rural areas . “If I want other work, I must travel 25-50 kilometres to Coimbatore or Pollachi to work in a factory” she said. Her sister, once a farm worker, has already moved to Tiruppur to work in a garment factory. “With farming jobs disappearing, life without work is unbearable,” she said.
Leelavathi, another labourer, faces the same uncertainty. “My husband and I get only about 10 days of work a month in coconut and areca nut farms. When I was young, we had three cropping seasons a year. Work was daily. Since the 2016 drought, jobs have almost disappeared.” She tried a coconut-fibre unit and later a textile mill, but the long hours, fibre dust and cotton debris made her sick. “I couldn’t sleep at night,” she said. She returned to farm work not because it pays, but because it feels bearable.
Migration is now the default. Many families have at least one member working in a textile mill, coir unit or construction site in Coimbatore or Tiruppur. Mahendran, 28, left in 2022 for a textile mill job after fieldwork dropped to barely 8-10 days a month. “Only the very old and women are still here,” he said. Others, like Murugan (55), migrated late in life, “I never imagined I’d have to leave the village at this age. But coconut gives work only once in 40 days. Construction at least pays.”
For women like Sumithra, migration has meant a different kind of burden. Her husband now works in a garment unit in Palladam and comes home once in two or three Sundays. “I’m raising the children alone. In almost every second house here, the men have gone out for work,” she said.
According to Dr. Ravindran, Director of Research at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU), the state has taken steps to help farmers adapt to climate stress. “For over a decade, TNAU’s Agricultural Climate Research Centre has been providing weather forecasts, rainfall, wind speed, crop advisories, through the Uzhavan mobile app and our district-level offices,” he said.
TNAU also runs Climate Smart Village pilots in 385 villages. Each village has rainfall monitors, and farmers receive crop recommendations based on local data. Model farms, about two to four acres each, demonstrate practices such as micro-irrigation, mulching, drought-tolerant varieties, diversified cropping, and integrated farming. For water-stressed belts, TNAU recommends millets, pulses, oilseeds, horticulture, and managed plantations like coconut and areca.
But on the ground, the reach is thin. Most farmers this reporter interviewed in Coimbatore district said they had never heard of the Uzhavan app, let alone used it. Tamil Nadu has 12,620 village panchayats and only a fraction fall under the pilot. Older farmers struggle with smartphone-based advisories, and many climate-resilient practices require upfront investments, drip systems, mulching sheets, or new seed varieties that small farmers cannot afford.
Environmental activist and farmer advocate Paamayan from Poovulagin Nanbargal argues that advice alone is not enough. “Farmers need financial support and subsidies to adapt. If the government wants them to shift to drought- or flood-resistant crops, it must incentivise it,” he said. He added that no state scheme directly targets climate impacts.
“There’s no long-term data on how much land has been affected, what crops suffered, or how soil patterns changed. Without scientific data, farmers can’t fight climate change effectively,” he said.
TNAU confirms these gaps. The university does not maintain long-term village-level data on land degradation, crop loss, or soil changes. It tracks only seasonal trends like rainfall, pest outbreaks, and district-level yields. “Comprehensive climate-impact mapping requires dedicated funding and inter-department coordination,” Ravindran said. “We submit our recommendations, but these initiatives are beyond our mandate.” Tamil Nadu’s Agriculture Secretary, Dakshinamurthy, declined to comment.
Balachandran, former Director of the Chennai Meteorological Centre, said a coordinated, science-based approach is overdue. “Climate change is one factor, but land-use change and declining profits also matter. The Agriculture Department, TNAU and the Meteorological Centre should jointly collect 30 years of rainfall, crop loss and land-shift data at the village level,” he said. No department has taken ownership so far, funding is limited, and coordination remains weak.
“With accurate data and scientific planning, we can at least reduce the scale of agricultural losses,” he said. “But without it, farmers are left to navigate climate change on their own.”
This project is supported by the Internews Earth Journalism Network with funding from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida)
This article was originally published in 101 Reporters under Creative Common license. Read the original article.
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