Development of agriculture in Sri Lanka

Dr. Mathu H. Liyanage

Sri Lanka is phenomenally an agricultural country where the staple food of the people is rice. The policy objective of the successive governments since independence to make the country self-sufficient in rice gave prominence to rural areas and paddy cultivation. They also considered self-sufficiency in rice as a security issue, making use of the notion of food security. The country is almost self-sufficient in rice now but imports rice to meet periodic shortages occasioned by deficits caused by the market forces of supply and demand, and natural disasters such as droughts and floods.

About 807,763 hectares of land cover paddy cultivation - 64% is cultivated in Maha season and 35% in Yala season. Nearly 879,000 families are engaged in paddy cultivation, 20% of the country's population and 32% of those employed

With the cessation of hostilities in the North and Eastern Provinces of the country caused by the 30-year old civil war, about 45,000 acres of paddy fields are expected to come under the plough during the coming Maha season - 30,000 acres in the North and 15,000 at Vahaneri and paddy fields within the Mahaveli irrigation scheme in the Batticaloa district. Agriculture, the main livelihood of the majority of the people in the North and East, will get an impetus from the government rehabilitation programs of Uthuru Vasanthaya and Negenahira Navodaya.

Neglected paddy fields

The Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) already settled in their villages will be given free seed paddy, fertilizer and assistance for clearing weeds in the neglected paddy fields and arable land in the area, acceleration of de-mining and the restoration of a large number of reservoirs of Vavuniya to supply irrigation facilities are yet another stimulus to step up an increased production of paddy.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa is quite correct when he recently declared that, once agriculture and its subsidiary industries are well developed and sustainable, other industries would flow from it without the need for industrialization as the Westerners argue. But it is of paramount importance for the government to take further action on smallholder farmers and make them more competitive and sustainable through technological innovations and producer organizations.

The land distributed to people in rural areas under the Land Development Ordinance of 1935 was in lots of 5 acres in wetland and 3 acres of high land. In 1953 each allotment was reduced to 3 acres and 2 acres respectively until 1956 when it was further reduced to 2 acres of wetland and 1 acre of highland. In the newer settlements, the uniform allotment is 2.5 acres of paddy and 0.5 acre of homestead. There occurred a new development in land ownership especially in the Hambantota and Batticaloa districts as most of the land came to be owned by absentee landlords.

The Paddy Lands Act of 1953 removed the absentee landlords from these settlements, middlemen known as Gambarayas (custodians of villages) who managed the allotments for more than one owner, and reduced the rent paid by these middlemen to landlords and improved their security as tenants. Those who tilled the land were still treated as labourers and were not benefited by the reforms. A new Department of Agrarian Services was established to oversee marketing, credit, crop insurance and land tenure reform with village-level farmer organizations. The Paddy Lands Act of 1958 and subsequent amendments further regulated the authority that landlords could exercise over tenants, regulated the rents and provided security of tenure of a permanent and heritable nature.

It also had provision to prevent further fragmentation of paddy lands and measures for the consolidation of small-sized holdings. Though steps have been taken by previous governments to transfer outright ownership of land held under LDO permits, these allotments are still owned by the State although they have been given to farmers.

A loan from a bank

It has to be realized that, without outright ownership of land, farmers cannot sell the land or use them as collateral in negotiating a loan from a bank. Time is now opportune for the government to look into this issue seriously and modify the provisions to make the land market more vibrant and allow better-off farmers to acquire reasonably larger tracts of land for more profitable paddy cultivation.

The fertilizer subsidy is yet another burning issue though essentially beneficial to the farmer to reduce the cost of production of paddy, it has become a financial burden on the government which allocated Rs 40,000 million in 2008 to meet its commitments. Yet another Rs 27,000 million was given recently as an increase for the year 2009. The government is supporting the fertilizer subsidy as it reduces the cost to the farmer, and on the ground that most governments including the United States subsidize farming activities.

But fertilizer forms only a small part of the cost of production compared with other inputs such as labour, tractors, harvesting and threshing. It would appear more feasible and economical to consider offering a good price to farmers for paddy and withdraw the subsidy, as some would argue.

Though this proposal appears to be sound on the face of it, yet it will be more effective and realistic to offer assistance in kind rather than in cash as the fertilizer given to farmers will have to be used as intended.

On the other hand, there is the possibility that cash payments may sometimes not be used to buy fertilizers if there are other pressing needs for its use when farmers get the cash. Marketing of paddy will also pose a problem for farmers if storage facilities are not readily available to them.

All the stores of the Paddy Marketing Board are said to be full now, and it was mainly the reason for the withdrawal of the order for compulsory purchase of 200 kilos of paddy per acre from farmers.

It is high time more space was provided for storage of paddy in view of the anticipated bumper crops during the Yala and Maha seasons.

These improvements and the utmost enthusiasm shown by the government towards agriculture in rural areas are certain to make the country fully self-sufficient in rice in the near future, reducing the poverty in the rural districts and the socio-economic gap between them and the urban population who are involved in industries and in provision of services.

The writer is a freelance journalist and author