Farmers becoming entrepreneurs under Mahinda Chinthana policy

Nimal Wijesinghe - Anuradhapura Additional District group corr

Today, our farmers are entertaining many comforts of life due to the implementation of Mahinda Chinthanaya policies. It is a pity that the media pose the image of the traditional farmer as a person dressed in shabby attire, haggard looking and unshaven, which is the symbol of poverty. It is misleading and discouraging, said Agriculture Minister Mahinda Yapa Abeywardana.

He was addressing a workshop on a project to strengthen agriculture extension service through agriculture entrepreneurial activities at Anuradhapura Miridiya Hotel Auditorium recently.

The minister participated in the conference during his two day official tour in Anuradhapura reviewing the progress made in the implementation of the ministry's Agriculture Business School programme launched to hoist the farmer to the position of a successful entrepreneur.

The minister said the concept of the agriculture business school was of high national importance as it helped the farmer achieve objectives such as a good harvest, usage of carbonic fertilizer, taking to scientific agriculture, advanced marketing facilities, post harvest techniques and attracting their children to farming.

"Our agriculture requires well planned and a correctly designed management. When vegetables brought to Dambulla Economic Trade Centre, they were dumped in bulks as waste. But the same vegetable varieties were sold at the local vegetable outlets including Dambulla town and the suburb.

"This incident could have been avoided through correct agricultural management which farmers as well as the officials lacked," the minister said.

"We should not depend only on Dambulla in our marketing deals," the minister added.

He said as a government, the farmers shall be given a guarantee that they would definitely get adequate marketing facilities for their products and when aggrieved due to natural disasters such as drought and flood, they will be well looked after.

"We will draw plans to face such challenges," Minister Abeywardana said. He added that the farm business school programme was launched in 2010 by the ministry with financial and technical supported by United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in North Central, Central, North West and Uva Provinces as a pilot project. It will be extended to the North and Eastern Provinces depending on the success of the programme.

Agriculture Secretary Wijeratne Sakalasooriya said the aim of the ministry is to increase the annual income of the local farmer which was at the level of US $ 2,800 to 4,000 within the next three years.

He said farmers will be encouraged to take to growing subsidiary crops and practice animal husbandry, fruit cultivation and systematic vegetable growing as the country was self sufficient in paddy. There will be extravagantly high surplus of paddy stock amidst uncertain and undependable international rice purchasing market. The secretary said farmers shall be encouraged to grow big onions of which around 80,000 metric tons were being imported. According to him the country imports 80 percent of its national requirement at present.

Minister Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena made several field visits in Rambewa and Nachchaduwa where farmers were successfully participating in the farm business school field activities.

The minister visited the seven acre paddy field of Preethi Priyadarsana de Silva at Jaffna Road Rambewa where he has cultivated native paddy varieties such as Suwandel, mavee etc by using carbonic fertilizer and herb chemicals.