Food systems in Sri Lanka

Potentials and limitations:

P I Singhapathirana and B K Guluwita

The World Town Planning Day is celebrated today and it was founded in 1949 by the University of Buenos Aires, in order to gain the local and global importance towards town planning. Today, on the World Town Planning Day 2010, we are concerned about integrating food systems into the planning process. Thus, the theme for this year is ‘healthy people, healthy places and healthy planet’.

This special day feature focuses on the potentials and limitations of our food systems as well as the importance of developing and adopting environmental friendly mechanisms for food production to make the food available, accessible, and affordable for every citizen of the country.

A food system can be conceptualized with different stages in its supply chain which includes food production, buying and processing, storage, wholesale and retail consumption and waste management. As the location, resource efficiency and resource utilization are important for the whole food system, the spatial planners could play a keyrole in creating a healthy and sustainable food production system.

Sri Lanka, as a self-sufficient and agriculture-based civilization in the historic times, possessed a well-managed food system. The surplus of production was exported to foreign countries during these historic times thus, the country was known as ‘the Granary of East’. In the present context the agricultural land cover is about 30 percent (2.26 million ha) of the total land area (World Bank, 2001). Agricultural sector provides employment to nearly 32.6 percent of the national labour force and 12 percent share for the national GDP (Central Bank 2009). Paddy dominates the agricultural production as the staple food in Sri Lanka which is strongly associated with other agricultural products such as fruits and vegetables, fishery, cereals, dairy products, spices, cash crops and different other crops.

Irrigation had been playing a vital role in agricultural production. Sri Lanka has a well-established irrigation network including 60 large multipurpose dams, 260 large and medium sized major irrigation schemes, and 12,000 minor working village tanks (Census of Agriculture 2002) which has been the back-borne of the agricultural system from the historic periods. The upcoming projects will also add new areas for agriculture with irrigation facilities.

The Special Economic Centres which include both wholesale and retail have been located in Meegoda, Veyangoda, Ratmalana, Narahenpita, Welisara etc and function as regional centres in food supply. These centres can provide facilities for farmers to sell their production for reasonable prices with less influence of the middle man.

No industry could be managed without research and development. In Sri Lanka, we have centres for agricultural research and development in Mahailuppallama, Gannoruwa, Bathalegoda and Lunuwila which are contributing for the development of the agriculture sector by introducing high breed varieties, best practices in agriculture.

Limitations

But still, so many limitations can be found in our food chain, from the production up to the consumption. Asia is limited in its proportion of arable land. The statistics show that even though 60 percent of the world population lies within the Asian region, only 20 percent of the world’s arable lands are available in Asia. Sri Lanka is experiencing a serious declining of agricultural lands in the past few decades.

The forces of urbanization and the demand upon land are leading towards the conversion of agricultural land for town centre developments. Especially, since the paddy lands (which naturally low-lying lands) are highly sensitive landscape elements which act as water retention areas, these conversions badly affect the paddy production and also causing damage to the urban environment.

Simultaneously, degradation of arable lands which is an outcome of soil erosion, water logging, salinization and poor land management practices (over utilization of fertilizer) further aggravates this situation. Ultimately in the long run, it causes to reduce the productivity of land and make them incompatible for agricultural production.

Sri Lankan agricultural system is highly dependent on the weather conditions and climate of the region. Last year, paddy production in the Yala season, coconut and sugar production were severely affected due to monsoon delay and the unfavourable weather conditions that prevailed (Central Bank, 2009). Simultaneously, the unpredictable disasters such as floods and droughts have created further impacts on the production. Different studies have revealed some emerging negative impacts on agricultural production, which have been caused by the changing pattern in the climate.

Cost of production

In terms of the cost of production the cost for labour incurs the largest portion comparing to the cost for material and power. At the same time contrasting to large scale production in small holding sector, the production cost per unit is much higher. With all these bottlenecks, the net return gained by the farmers are rapidly going down which forces them to go in search of more profitable income sources. As a result, the labour forced involved in agricultural sector had been going down as well. Water management in agriculture is one of the key aspects to be considered.

Agriculture sector demands and consumes the highest quantity of water and according to the findings, about 85 percent of the water supply derived from major irrigation systems is used for water-intensive irrigated paddy agriculture. But, different studies have revealed that, the problems in this major irrigation systems, makes the system inefficient such as excessive water use and wastage, conveyance losses, inequality of water distribution and problems of siltation in reservoirs etc.

Apart from the matters related to the production, there are many shortcomings and inefficiencies of the present distribution network of the food. For the whole country there are only few National scale distribution centres like Dambulla and Colombo. The high influence of the middle man makes a negative impact on the price of the food items. For example, the production of the farmer is collected by the transport agent or the collector and taken in to the wholesale market of Colombo or Dambulla.

Thereafter, through wholesale and retail sellers the food production reaches the consumer. At the same time, the production which comes from the agricultural regions is required to be distributed to the main cities in large quantities to feed the population. At present, as it has limited options for transportation, the distribution is mainly done by trucks. This process includes high frequency of loading and unloading and transportation for long distances. With all these processes, it cause damages to a good part of the production in the middle (40% of vegetable production is damaged during transportation).

And it is very important to analyze the present day lifestyle and the related food habits of the people that have changed to a greater extent (sometimes, food is no longer a matter of hunger, but it has become a branded commodity itself in the market) and people are highly addicted to the fast food with less nutrient levels. Most of these food items made out of wheat flour and indirectly encourage the imports though we have the alternatives within our country.

Even with these existing characteristics of the food system of Sri Lanka, statistical facts and figures reflect a different dimension of the recent situations. As the figure A illustrates, even without the amount of annual rice imports, Sri Lanka has been able to achieve the self sufficiency in annual rice requirement during the recent few years.

Evidently, even though said problematic areas in the food system can be viewed as separate phenomena, in terms of spatial planning perspectives, which is always associated with an integrated approach, these obstacles in the existing food system can be viewed as an outcome of a common issue. Findings of a recent study conducted by the Department of Town and Country Planning, University of Moratuwa, revealed that the common issue is ‘Lack of information within the food system in the national context’.

As it is commonly known, the term ‘Information’ has become a very powerful tool in the present context and ‘possession of information’ can create an immense change. Therefore, it is quite clear that if any problem prevails in the existing food system, it is due to the lack of combination or integration among different agents, caused due to blockages or lack of access to the information within.

Accordingly, in spatial planning perspectives, a separate system that is well-integrated and efficient is needed that could cater both growing needs and existing problems. Having all the agents, institutions and flows under one integrated system would be convenient to cater to both needs and issues of that system.

With this type of a approach it will be the best to understand ‘Information in the food system’ within the said conceptualized stages: Food production, Buying and processing, Food storage, Wholesale & Retail, Consumption and waste management. And in an integrated approach, it is the duty of spatial planners to come up with an innovative system that could tackle most of these issues. A particular system, which is well-linked with the existing food system of the country, should have following characteristics.

Overall functions

Well-linked and hierarchal spatial arrangement with convenient functional flows (flow of information, commodity, financial and human resources and knowledge) from top to bottom, covering every element of the existing food system.

This spatial arrangement can be in the form of a combination of different centres located within regions throughout the country.

A separate national level Government administrative body, managing the above flows among the different private and community organizations within the hierarchy.

A web-based advanced network of information (including a database) to cater high-speed communication within the different elements of the system.

Food production

The proposed system should be able to maintain databases of daily food production, collection, prices and labour force that can be communicated throughout the network to evenly distribute the share within different areas of the country.

The latest technological improvements and technical knowhow of agricultural practices (land and water management, improving land productivity and quality, urban agriculture, organic fertilizer, facing disasters, high-breed seeds, technological innovations, financial assistance etc.) should also be provided to the farmers and community organizations at the very grassroots level.

From village level to the regional level, food collection and distribution should have to be done through different levels of collection centres according to the amount of production.

Technologically improved equipment, knowledge and suitable transportation network should be readily available for the local level farmers in order to reduce the food wastage during transportation.

Food storage

The collection centres in areas of high production should be associated with suitable storage spaces and the information network should communicate with other centres to share the production.

Food items such as dairy products which require specific types of storage and preservation should be facilitated based on the locations.

Wholesale and Retail

The information related to daily food prices (wholesale and retail) should be accessed to any buyer through the system which would discourage the involvement of the middle-man and ensure reasonable and transparent pricing system.

The designated transportation network could also be used to cater different food demands among different regions through the proposed system.

Consumption and Waste Management

Advices related to food nutrition, food consumption patterns, consumer protection etc. should be provided through the institutions under the proposed mechanism to the citizens of both urban and rural areas in order to achieve food satisfaction.

An internal mechanism should be associated within the systems to manage and recycle food waste generated throughout the food supply mechanism in order to reuse them as a resource.

While integrating the information into the food system, this mechanism also should include other supportive strategies to improve the production of the country by intensive cultivation in highest productive land, a compact urban development to discourage the land conversion, urban agriculture to produce food within city and water management and soil conservation mechanisms to have the optimum utilization of land.

The sole objective of a particular mechanism would be to achieve 3As of food for every Sri Lankan, which is, Food Availability, Access to food and Food Affordability. If these objectives were met along with the proposed mechanism, ‘Food security’ can be achieved with least cost to the environment.

It is obvious that there are both limitations and challenges within the existing food system and it should be carefully coped with.