Big demand for quality organic products - Agriculture Minister

Ishara MUDUGAMUWA

‘Sri Lanka is predominantly an agricultural country. Agriculture contributes around 12-13 percent to the Gross Domestic Product and 33-36 percent of the workforce is engaged in agriculture,’ said Agriculture Minister Mahinda Yapa Abeywardane.

He was participating in the inauguration ceremony of the Asian Productivity Organization(APO) Training Course on Organic Product Certification and Auditing at Goldi Sands Hotel, Negombo yesterday. Minister Abeywardane said there is a great demand for organic products in Europe and the US.

“These global markets are looking for certified organic agri - food products and it is expanding rapidly resulting in greater opportunities to our products, “ he said.

“These consumers are increasingly concerned about authentic organic products. As a result, widely accepted organic product certification and auditing procedures were born and many countries follow the same.” said the minister.

He said it is necessary to motivate the agriculture producer to prepare the best quality organic products to cater to the market demands to get high prices.

This will bring more foreign exchange to our country and help the agriculture sector by contributing more to the national economy and improving the living standards of producers.

“Farming will no more be attractive to the farming community if the cost of production is high and the prices for agriculture commodities are low. It is necessary to bring down the cost of production and provide better prices for agriculture products to overcome these problems.” he said.

The minister said it is also important to develop agricultural products to suit the consumer preference to address the issue. Presently, organic agriculture is a very hot topic and a profitable business. The best quality is the key factor in organic products as the consumer is very strict on its quality. So the producer has to assure its quality by adhering to a certain globally accepted procedure to meet the standards requirement by spending additional time during organic product production.

The Training Course was jointly organized by the Agriculture Ministry and the APO and it will be held from June 18 to 23. The APO is an international organization based in japan and it helps member countries to enhance productivity of industrial and agriculture fields.

APO Senior Programme Officer Mohammed Saeed, Productivity Promotion Ministry Secretary Lalith Kannangara, Agriculture Ministry Additional Secretary, Agriculture Technology D. B. T. Wijeratne, Director Project L. Hathurusinghe, 24 members from IPO member countries and many other officials participated.