Trichy: The mortal remains of visionary organic farmer Nel Jayaraman were cremated at his native village Kattimedu near Thiruthuraipoondi in Tiruvarur district on Friday. A crusader for revival of traditional paddy varieties, he had breathed his last at a private hospital in Chennai on Thursday. His body was brought to his native place on Thursday night after several political leaders including DMK president M K Stalin paid homage at a residence of his relative in Chennai.A large number of people queued up at his house at Kattimedu to pay their last respects to the man who spent a major part of his life for the revival of about 170 traditional paddy varieties. He also popularised the seeds by conducting national paddy festival in the past few years, a service which earned him the name ‘Nel’ Jayaraman. Food minister R Kamaraj said the state government would bear the expenses incurred on his treatment. Leaders of farmers associations insisted on displaying the revived paddy varieties at the Tamil Nadu Rice Research Institute in Aaduthurai. Jayaraman was honoured with Best Organic Farmer award by the state government in 2012 and 2013 and Genome Saviour award by the central government.For the last three months since he was admitted to a private hospital in Chennai for cancer treatment, Nel Jayaraman has been reliving memories of the journeys that he made into the rural pockets in search of paddy seeds. The humble farmer had started a journey with his guru Nammalvar more than a decade ago and his followers say the death will not stop the journey. At least 125 traditional paddy seeds that he revived have been documented. Jayaraman even brought out a book in Tamil with details about each seed that he collected from farmers. The book on native paddy varieties and their medicinal qualities even has numbers of farmers from whom the seeds had been collected.Senior agriculture journalist M J Prabhu, who accompanied Jayaraman in his seed-collection drive, described how Jayaraman’s initiative helped laid-back places like Kancheepuram get back to farming. “Today, Kancheepuram boasts of three seed banks. Jayaraman gave 13 seeds specific to the region,” he said.A school dropout-turned-farmer, Jayaraman revived the seeds as part of the Save our Rice (SoR) Campaign, a national movement aimed at conserving traditional varieties of paddy. It was through various experiments and observations that Jayaraman realised that native varieties of paddy are best suited for the coastal districts, which are prone to climatic variations.

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