Agricultural dividends

The ambitious food production drive of President Mahinda Rajapaksa is evidently yielding results. According to our front page story yesterday the Yala crop has recorded a 50 percent increase over the 2007 yield. Significantly it was in 2007 that President Rajapaksa launched the national food production drive in the wake of a looming global food crisis.

That we have been able to come out the crisis unscathed is testimony to the soundness of this strategy once more driving home the importance of growing our own food instead of subjecting ourselves to the vagaries of global conditions.

The report also notes that the bumper Yala harvest coincides with the cultivation of all abandoned paddy lands under the Government’s Api Wavamu Rata Nagamu program. Agriculture Minister Maithripala Sirisena presenting a set of new regulations under the Agrarian Development Act in Parliament told the House that in the Western Province alone 50 percent of fallow lands were cultivated during the ensuing period.

This shows the potential for agriculture even in a urbanised backdrop which augers well for future plans to boost the country’s food production drive. The Government should come down hard on unauthorised filling of abandoned paddy land. Today even large acres of coconut land have been parcelled out by property developers doing massive harm to crop and inducing scarcities. What is required is to strike a healthy balance between development and preserving the country’s agricultural heritage.

The New Regulations will also vest the Ministry with powers to seize uncultivated agriculture lands from their owners and transfer them to others for cultivation purposes. A significant factor that contributed to the high yield is also the agricultural activity in the liberated East where according to the Minister some 50,000 hectares were brought under the plough.

With the total liberation of the North things can only improve by leaps and bounds.

Many Governments in the past commenced ambitious food production drives. There was the famous ‘grow more food’ campaign by the 65-70 Dudley Senanayake Government while the United Front Government that followed also launched many campaigns to boost local agricultural production and even went to the extent of banning imports of items such as lentils and onions that could be grown locally. These measure naturally caused scarcities since the demand far outstripped production which invariably led to the fall of that Government.

Had only our people been a little more patient and allowed the production drive to catch on we would have been near self sufficient in many of the food items we import today draining valuable Foreign exchange. By Minister Sirisena’s own admission the Government spends nearly Rs.100 billion annually to import food items that could be produced locally. He said the Government’s intention was to cultivate all such food crops locally within the next two years under its national food production drive. This is with the aim of creating a agricultural boom in the country obviating the need for imports.

In this context the move to appropriate uncultivated agriculture land from their owners is a sound one. This, while putting a halt to creeping urbanisation in the villages would also dissuade the next generation of farmers migrating to the cities for white collar jobs as the trend indicates. They would now be compelled to stay back and cultivate their lands.

It is indeed sad that many of our people consider it infra dig to engage in agricultural pursuits. This, in a country which boasts of a 2500 old agro civilisation. Even in highly industrialised countries like Japan pride of place is given to agriculture and where self sufficiency is achieved in rice and many other food crops. In the industrialised West with all the high tech sophistication the ‘gentleman farmer’ is still a prominent figure in society and people take pride in engaging in cultivation.

A similar ethos should be instilled in the next generation of our farmer community too in order to keep them within the fold.If not the food production drive would some day come unstuck due to the depletion of the farmer community in the country. This complaint is already being made in the fisheries sector.

All incentives should be given to persuade more and more people to take up agricultural farming as an occupation. They should be harkened to the glorious past where the country was known as Asia’s rice bowl and the marvels of the hydraulic systems and giant irrigation tanks that still stands sentinel to a once booming agricultural civilisation.