Food drive a national need

THE Government’s national food production drive launched by President Mahinda Rajapaksa yesterday takes us back to many decades when similar campaigns to promote locally grown food crops were undertaken by all regimes.

There was the famous ‘grow more food drive’ by Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake which encouraged people to set up home gardens.

Premier Senanayake to whom agriculture was a topic closest to his heart went to great lengths to popularise the home garden concept with media campaigns to inculcate in the minds of the people the importance of growing their own food.

The Bandaranaike regime that followed too took forward this campaign to greater heights necessitated by the closed economy that was followed and the import restrictions that called for stepped up local food production.

How far these campaigns succeeded is anybody’s guess but judging by the enormous import bill on agricultural items that could be locally grown it is reasonable to assume that these food production drives had failed to have any impact.

Hence it is necessary for the Government to take stock of the situation and draw out a systematic plan to make this endeavour a success.

Examples in this regard could be borrowed from countries such as China and Japan which though essentially industrialised countries have given pride of place to the agricultural sector.

True, the open economy and liberalisation may have relegated agriculture to the fringes and rendered the home garden concept redundant with imports flooding the market. In addition the imported variety is also cheaper and the prevailing rat race may not lend itself to such leisurely pursuits such as home gardening.

But we should heed the advice of scientists and agricultural experts the world over who have warned of an impending global food crisis and famine with a drastic depletion of the world’s agricultural resources.

There is therefore an urgent need for a wake up call to our people who have hitherto taken our Earth’s bounties for granted.

It is in this context that the Government’s national food production drives assumes greater importance in addition to the concern on the loss of valuable foreign exchange on imports.

The chief problem faced by the Government in this endeavour no doubt is the lack of space, with giant modernisation and burgeoning construction activities over the years swallowing up most of our available land space.

Hence it is time that the Government starts making use of all idle state land in pursuit of its food production drive.

Strict instructions should be issued to halt the filling of all paddy lands while an incentive scheme should be contemplated to encourage more home garden projects.

The decision taken by the Government to devise legal measures to vest private land which have not been utilised over a long period too is a move in the right direction.

Above all what is required is to motivate our people to take up agricultural pursuits which are today even shunned by the children of farmers’ offspring.

While the home garden concept should be given an impetus the Government should also strive to improve the lot of the traditional farmer who feeds the nation, in the form of more incentives and concessions.