Kadaneri, Sivagangai district
The tank that came back to life
A 400-year-old village tank, silted to a puddle, now irrigates 8 acres again, and the village's wells haven't run dry since.
Read the storySuccess story · Soil Rehabilitation
Twelve acres nobody wanted
Saline, abandoned farmland reclaimed over three seasons, now growing millets, pulses, and the district's first farmer-owned seed plot.
3 seasonsfrom wasteland to harvest
Veppankulam, Ramanathapuram district · 2023-2025 · now farmer-managed
Veppankulam's 12-acre stretch had been abandoned for over a decade, salinity from over-extraction and a failed prawn-farm experiment had left the topsoil crusted white. Land records showed four owners, none of whom farmed it.
“The land was so white with salt we grazed goats on it and nothing else. They showed us the soil could be healed. I did not believe it until my first millet harvest.”
Reclamation began with drainage: cut-off trenches and gypsum application to leach salts, followed by two green-manure cycles of dhaincha ploughed back into the soil. Our team negotiated a cost-share agreement with all four owning families, who contributed labour in lieu of cash.
By the third season, soil tests cleared the land for salt-tolerant millets and pulses. Today the plot yields two crops a year, and one acre hosts a farmer-managed seed multiplication plot for our community seed bank, the first in the district.
Site-level monitoring data for this project is available on our Impact page
Want a story like this with your name in it?
This project started with one enquiry. Yours can too.
