Palm tree and its benefit, palm tree is the lifeline of my village

Read about the benefits of palm tree and how this became lifeline for the people of Tamil Nadu living particularly in the south eastern part. How my village people are depend on the palm tree. How much one can earn from palm tree.

Palm tree is the lifeline for the people living in the south-eastern part of Tamil Nadu. My village called Nathakulam, a small village coming under Ramanathapuram District. Palm tree is the boon of our village. The people get everything for their living from the products of Palm tree. Especially, in Ramanathapuram, one of the districts of Tamil Nadu, plenty of Palm tree plantation can be seen in this area. Palm tree require sandy area where its roots can penetrate into the soil freely. The tree can survive without rain for many years too. The roots of this tree reaches the underground water table and absorbs water from there making their life unaffected by the drought like condition. A palm tree takes around 10-15 years to attain its complete maturity.

Benefits of palm tree:

The villagers used to sow the palm seeds over all four sides of their field. As the time passes, the palm saplings get the shape of palm tree.

The palm leaves used to make palm mate. At present the cost of a mate is Rs 11 per mate. The ladies in my village can easily make around 7-10 mates per day making an earning of Rs 77 to 110. This income is sufficient for a family to live in villages. This is an additional income along with their cultivation.
The midrib cane, an extension from the tree to the leave costs Re1 per piece. Men at villages used to arrange at least 100 midrib canes per day after separating the palm leaf. This can also be added to their family income.
The coir industry workers come to our village to collect the raw materials for coir from the palm tree. They take hundreds of trees on lease for few months. After collecting the raw materials for coir they give the lease amount to the owner of the palm plantation . This can also be an additional income for the family though this is very low.
The palm sticks which are widely used for making brooms.
A sweet drink produced from palm tree which used to make jaggery. This require lot of hard work to collect sufficient amount of at least 10 litres of palm sweet juice from around 10-15 trees. Climbing up of 10-15 trees to collect the sweet palm juice is really a tough job. Approximately 6-7 mud pots are placed at the top of each tree. The flowering part is tied together and a small slice made on it from where the sweet palm juice dripping drop by drop into the mud pots. Finally around 1/4 litre of the juice can be collected from one mud pot in a day. This sweet juice is used to make palm jaggery. At present one kilogram palm jaggery costs Rs 80/-. A family of four or five members can make 5 kg of jaggery per day. This is really a good income for their family.
Palm fruit can be obtained from palm tree which is a tasty fruit. This fruit can be consumed either by burning or by boiling.
Eventually, the palm tree can be sold for wooden use for making pillars or beams for the construction purpose.

By going through all the benefits of palm tree, one can understand why the people of south eastern part of Tamil Nadu call this palm tree as their lifeline. They live on the products of Palm tree. The economy of a village is totally depends on how much trees they have. It also depends on how they are putting their hard work in extracting the products of palm tree for making money. A family can earn around 200-300 per day by putting their all possible effort in my village.