Almost 3,000 mango trees in the regions of Dhari, Chalala-Gir were destroyed in the last few days. Badly affected, either by the failure of crops, diseases spreading in the crop, poor price for their produce or simply the ageing of the trees, the owners of these mango orchards decided to say goodbye to the kesar mango forever and in the process have made the green banks of the Shell river which flows through Gir look barren. Farmers of villages in Dhargani in Chalala area are cleaning up their mango orchards, which is ironically the constituency of state agriculture minister Dilip Sanghani. "A disease called Sonmasi has damaged mangoes of this region. Due to this disease, fruits either wither away at a premature state or become inedible,' says a local farmer, adding, "Forget earning, we are not able to earn enough for maintenance of the orchards.' The cutting of trees is not a first: last year, due to similar reasons, bulldozers erased more than 15,000 mango trees in Dhudahla, Govindpur, Sarasiya, Fachariya, Jiyani, Karen, Lakhapadar, Vavadi, Dipla villages of Dhari Taluka. "If the activity of uprooting Kesar trees continues, we will talk of Kesar, but no mango will be available,' complained a farmer. Another peculiar problem with the trees of this region is that, many of the mango trees are very old and have lost their capacity to fructify, leaving the farmer with no other alternative but to weed them out. "In another few years, mango orchards will disappear and its place will be taken up by some cash crop in this Chalala Gir region,' says a farmer. Says another local trader, "Few years ago, traders from outside the region came to buy mangoes. But nobody comes to this region anymore leaving a farmer to fend for himself.' SOURCE: SANDESH