Web of Life

The National Agricultural Museum in Gannoruwa was opened in 1998 to commemorate Sri Lanka’s 50th Anniversary of Independence with the objective of drawing attention to Sri Lanka’s traditional agriculture to revitalise our agricultural sector. Originally, the museum was to depict the agricultural process from beginning to end in both paddy and chena cultivation, along with the traditional farm house (govi gedera) and paddy storage bins (vee bissa) to minimise post-harvest losses and the home garden (gevatta). These were intended to inspire the people in recapturing the indigenous knowledge systems of our forefathers.

‘When the museum was first opened, it was done in such a way that all the traditional artefacts and agricultural practices were displayed and explained properly,’ Pandula Endagama, anthropologist and project consultant of the museum set up by the Hector Kobbekaduwa Agrarian Research and Training Institute (HARTI) said. ‘The gevatta was properly maintained using organic fertilisers and traditional cultivation methods that conserved soil and water as much as possible.’

Now the museum is different. The home garden is overflowing with produce from the vegetable plants: bunches of bright red tomatoes lean over to touch the earth; all varieties of chilli look threateningly at you and spinach looks bigger than ever. None of the plants, however, are organic, they are all laced with chemical fertilisers and pesticides. In short, they are wonderful to look at—but probably dangerous to eat.

‘When the museum was handed over to the Department of Agriculture, I did not think the department would move away from organic methods. I do not understand how this happened,’ Endagama said.

In the main museum building where sickles, neck yokes, thorny paddy brooms, measuring units (kartuva, busal, kuruniya, hunduwa etc.), hoe blades (mammoties—including the Sinhala mammoty), hand harrows, traditional kitchen appliances etc. are kept, labels in all three languages have not yet been put up for all artefacts, and there are little or no explanatory notes. One notices also a crowding of objects and a lack of proper preservation, their display leaving them open to the elements. Traditional baskets suffer the most from this lack of protection, and an old palm leaf manuscript of a record of water taxes is open to dust and deterioration.

‘Yet this museum is still better than what we had before it was set up. Then [as they still are], artefacts were lying in storage at the Department of National Museums,’ Endagama, said. The objects at the Gannoruwa museum have been collected from individual sources. Endagama is author of the museum handbook and compiler of ‘Traditional Agriculture in Sri Lanka’ (a collection of articles), co-compiled by K.A.S. Dayananda.

Director of HARTI D.G.P. Seneviratne said the museum must be brought alive, that it was not a place for dead things. ‘There was a time when an expert from the Ford Foundation announced that he wouldn’t sleep well till our last buffalo was in the zoo. He was a peddler of farm machinery unsuitable for paddy cultivation. This museum is not merely a place to display artefacts, it must show how those implements were used, how their use related to a particular tenor of life, and, if possible, how they were fashioned. Such elements can be recorded by video and shown to the visitors, many of whom are school children. The scope of the facility at Gannoruwa should be expanded to impart an appreciation of traditional agriculture methods to the people and be visitor friendly.’

Asked about the switch to chemical fertilisers in the gevatta, Director General of the Department of Agriculture Sarath Weerasena said the home garden had no connection to the museum building and traditional farmer’s house, contrary to the original plan.

‘We have done the best we can in the museum. It needs to be in much better shape, we need an air-conditioned, carpeted building, on the lines of museums abroad,’ Weerasena said. ‘This however requires a lot of money.’

Weerasena acknowledged that the department had not taken action to improve the museum. ‘At present, we need to put in a lot of funds for research and training elsewhere.’ However, he agreed that the museum itself if properly maintained could promote agriculture, in particular traditional agriculture.

‘The response by the people in visiting the museum has been tremendous. And this is without advertising. We only informed schools,’ Weerasena said.

The National Agricultural Museum could be an educational institution of the highest order for disseminating knowledge about our heritage, if its artefacts and practices associated with traditional agriculture are properly maintained and presented. In this sense, it would be another extension programme of the Ministry of Agriculture to improve the agricultural sector of the island.