Agriculture is not wading but wallowing in the mud! | Daily News

Agriculture is not wading but wallowing in the mud!

Cultivating ‘Every Inch of Land’ for Food Security?
Cultivated paddy land
Cultivated paddy land

The President, ministers and other dignitaries were recently seen pushing ploughs in paddy fields wading knee deep through the mud and sipping ‘kahata’ with jaggery for the cameras. Slogans such as “let’s cultivate every inch of cropland” and “Atu Kotu Purawamu” (lets fill the garners and farmyards) were uttered and the latter was even printed on their tea shirts. Surprisingly, there was no reference to “toxin free” farming which the government was pushing so enthusiastically during the last two years. Has it died an inevitable natural death?

Paddy farming keeps farmers poor

Be that as it may, as much as filling the garners, the need to fill the farmers’ purses is becoming increasingly important to keep them at their job. Increasing technical innovations and labour productivity are critically important. Is the government addressing these issues? Whilst the country has strived relentlessly for over 70 years from the 1940s for attaining food security via rice self sufficiency, the matter of farmer income had been totally overlooked. Rice being a low income crop, the farmer had been kept poor, compelling him to supplement his income via off-farm employment. The bulk of the youth are skipping “wading in the mud” preferring other types of employment, a predominant one being three-wheel driving which brings on average, a net daily income no less than Rs 2,000. A comparable income could hardly be achieved from rice farming even in the high potential paddy districts as seen in the table.

Returns even from irrigated rice is only about Rs 200,000 per hectare. The average holding size is rarely that large, there being ill-legal fragmentation among children. By contrast, the returns in general are much smaller for some of the wet zone districts and in some seasons, can even be negative, largely due to high labour costs and low yields. Compare these paddy incomes for example, with that from other crops (Rs /ha): black gram: 51,302; cow-pea:36,985; kurakkan; 6,350; brinjal: 445,822; green chillies: 833,432; pumpkin: 127. Although the income from vegetables could be attractive, marketing risks and the extents cultivable, limit returns. For pulses, the main constraint has been poor yields and research over the last 50 years has hardly pushed them.

So, on the whole, revolutionary changes in farming is needed.

This demands new vision from both the technocrats and politicians being discussed later. Politicians wading in the mud is no answer, although that is where most of them belong! Much has been spoken about production planning to mitigate overproduction, storage facilities and value addition over decades, but little has hitherto happened to help the dry zone farmer to increase his income. Much needs to be done in the future to keep rice farmers at their task.

Rational land use

On the other hand, the pressure for land, particularly for housing and construction, especially in the urban and sub-urban areas in the wet zone, demands diversification of the paddy and other lands away from unproductive agriculture. Dilanka Gamalath, in an article titled ‘Shelter vs Food – dangers facing agro-land’ refers to the Minister of Housing and Construction, Sajith Premadasa proposing relaxing regulations under the Agrarian Development Act of 2000, to enable some of the wet zone uncultivated paddy lands in the urban and suburban areas to be used for housing. That is a very sensible proposal contrary to Gamalath’s concern that loss of agricultural land could affect food security. Of about 67,000 hectare of paddy lands in the Colombo district, Gampaha, Kalutara, Galle and Kandy, nearly 17,000 ha remain uncultivated during both seasons and there is a need to use this land gainfully. Even in the unlikely scenario of the entire 67,000 hectare which is less than 10 percent of the total national rice cover and producing only about 5 percent of the countries rice being diversified, the impact on food security should be negligible. There is no argument that the lands close to townships in particular should be used for housing and industry and this requires the amendment of the outdated Act which prohibits diverting paddy lands even for other crops without authorisation of the District Secretary. But there has to be equitable distribution of lands for all human needs. Not only paddy, but other lands too need to be rationally diverted for such needs across the country. There is a housing backlog and some 100,000 housing units need to be built annually for which land has to be found. Food and shelter are both equally important. Apart from diverting for housing, some of these lands particularly those close to cities, if drained should be ideal for market gardening and protected agriculture (poly tunnels, greenhouses). Cattle farming is another alternative as most of these lands carry Brachiaria grass which is excellent fodder.

Gamalath also refers to a statement apparently made by the President during the launch of the food programme in Kekirawa. The President has supposedly said that one of the threats to agriculture is partitioning of coconut lands.

There is no argument that haphazard partitioning of coconut lands could affect coconut production. However, surprisingly, he has not been aware that over the last two decades or so, despite large scale fragmentation of coconut lands, the national coconut cover has fortunately increased from 390,000 to some 430,000 ha! This is a simple example of response to demand.

Coconut is fast turning out to be a high value crop. Not even the water from mature nuts is thrown away now from the mills; being value added and transformed to a sports drink much in demand in the U.S and Europe. And the ‘scary’ oil is now the most widely used vegetable oil in the dietary and pharmaceutical industries, globally. So people will continue to grow coconuts, if in demand.

Food security and self sufficiency

Sri Lanka had achieved rice self-sufficiency by about 2010 through the excellent efforts of our rice breeders and other rice scientists pushing both yield and production by 700 percent. The yields jumped from 0.6 t/ha in the 1940s to 4.5t/ha today; the land extent under rice increased only by three fold. The research yields are almost double this figure, so that with proper adoption of technology cutting down the rice cover even by 20-30 percent should not be difficult, meaning the country should potentially be able to feed itself even without the wet zone paddy lands. Moreover, the population increase is only about 1 percent per annum and the future agro-technology advances should easily be able to match this with comparable productivity increases. Chinese rice research yields are already approaching 20 t/ha! The case for self-sufficiency is highly justified given the fact that world rice market is thin and appears to be growing thinner as importing countries continue to relentlessly pursue productivity enhancing policies comparatively more than the exporting countries. This is contrary to world wheat and maize markets because of regular large external supplies such as from U.S, Canada and Australia. There is no central international market for rice similar to the Chicago market for maize and wheat. On the other hand, food security is more a function of per capita income or purchasing power. Most of the highly developed countries such as Norway, Switzerland, Netherlands and Belgium have food self sufficiency ratios of about 50 percent, but this is no concern because of the very high per capita incomes.

Labour productivity and technology

Two of the most disconcerting factors in our country are low productivity and poor technological innovations in the agriculture sector. As for labour productivity, I cannot help quote an example I have seen more than once in the Kandy Municipality area, of two or three labourers cleaning a drain being supervised by a young lady!

We are in an age where labour is being widely replaced by machinery and equipment.

There are effective weeders, transplanters and seeders. How widely are they used? What are the constraints to their wider use? Is it purchasing power of the farmers? These are matters that the government should address vigorously. I was impressed seeing the farmer in the picture, in the U.K, 80 years old, driving his tiller far smaller than a two wheel tractor. Can such machines be introduced here?

That we are way behind adopting latest technologies is exemplified by the picture of the high density mango plantation being now practised for over a decade in many Asian countries. I haven’t seen a single such plantation locally. The closest is the variety Tom J.C a selection by a farmer who has grown it extensively in his farm in Datusenapura. The fruit is yellow in colour, tastes and keeps well, and now widely grown by many, but is over Rs 300/kg in the shop. We need not ourselves generate all the technology that we need. Much can be copied/adopted from outside.

As for our research and development (R&D) in the food crop sector, we can only be proud of the achievements of our past rice scientists who generated high yielding, fertilizer responsive and pest resistant varieties that has made the country self- sufficient. The R&D outputs in the other areas have altogether been meagre leading to small productivity increases. Our subsidiary food crop yields have hardly increased, except perhaps maize, but average yields of Bangladesh and China are over 6 t/ha, of India 5 t/ha and ours 3 t/ha! Our green chilli yields are only 4 t/ha as against that of China, 22 t/ha! The Department of Agriculture’s (DOA’s) R & D has drastically deteriorated. There is just one top rice breeder now as against six in the hay days of the 1970s, and this officer is to retire in a few months.

The same is true of soil scientists, there being just one at the PhD level as against 6 in the 1970s, if my memory is right. Sadly, there has been little or no training and succession planning! This had been pointed out in an exhaustive review of the DOA in 2009 of which not one word has been implemented! Sadly the DOA has lost its focus and priorities, being more engaged in putting up “Helabojun” sales points and the likes to keep the politicians happy!

Agriculture is now not wading but wallowing in the mud!! 


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