Ginger harbinger!

The once fertile paddy fields of Kodagu are now being depleted of its fertility through widespread ginger cultivation. The ginger cultivated land becomes unsuitable for the cultivation of paddy later. Apart from draining away of soil nutrients by the ginger crop which is a voracious feeder, disease causing organisms from ginger crop remain in the soil and infest the paddy crops in future.

Ginger cultivation is also responsible for environmental hazards like tree felling, soil erosion and destruction of the precious vegetation from the land. It is not only the wet lands that are subjected to misuse through ginger cultivation. The uncultivated virgin lands, which are rich in vegetation like medicinal plants and other rare species of plants, get denuded by the ginger growers. With the indiscriminate chopping down of trees and intensive shade lopping done to facilitate ginger crops, the land is cleared of all kinds of natural greenery, leaving behind only the stumps, shorn of foliage.
Another interesting point to be noted here is that most of the ginger growers who obtain agricultural land on lease for ginger cultivation are Keralites, because the Kerala government has banned the cultivation of ginger in several parts of the state.
It is high time that the government intervened in this matter in order the save the fertile soil of Kodagu. Intensive ginger cultivation must be banned and restrictions must be imposed against it so that we may not face scarcity of staple food in the coming days.
Source-CLN

Large-scale use of paddy fields to grow ginger can have disastrous consequences on the water-table, says C.G. Kushalappa, Associate Professor, College of Forestry.
Source-Hindu