Beating the agricultural crisis by Mahinda Ranaweera
Governments since D.S. Senanayake's time have been tinkering at the agricultural policies, and the result is that we are importing 1,50,000 tons of rice, when we have sufficient stocks of paddy in the bins of the farmers for consumption.
Whatever politicians have been talking of in the past we are essentially an agricultural country, and, therefore, it is but timely to look back and see where we have gone wrong and why this has been so.
The farsighted erudite politician he was D.S. Senanayake had a pioneering task in agriculture in that he had to concentrate in opening up the once abandoned rice-growing tank fed lands back into cultivation.
Not only this, did he do this appreciably well, but also that he reinstated a peasant Sinhala population in the northern parts of the island much to the chagrin of the then expansionist Tamil politicians. If not for this far sightedness, the ethnic problem we are facing to day would have taken a more criminal turn.
He set up the agricultural Department, the Batalegoda paddy research station and the Peradeniya experimental station. He also opened up the entire eastern province through the Multi Purpose Agricultural Diversion Scheme Gal Oya, emulating the then famous Tenessey Valley Scheme of USA.
In this sphere I was fortunate enough to be associated with this founding father as a young District Land officer in the emergency Kachcheri at Polonnaruwa shuttling between Gal Oya and the the Parakrama Samudra colonization Scheme.
As is being done today, the Marxist and Trotskyite giants then such as Dr. N.M. Perera, Phillip Gunawardene, Dr. Colvin R De Silva, his pupil Batty Weerakoon and the comrades alone with the Stalinist communist blood brother Peter Kueneman, abused and character assassinated him and finally called him "jungle John," perhaps not having the vision to foresee that this agricultural prophet, had predicted the present crisis, the so called Marxist "podians" are grappling with today.
In his less talked of erudite agricultural thesis "Agriculture and patriotism" writing in 1935, long before these chatter boxes were even born, he foresaw this impending calamity.
He was a practical agriculturist and a theoretician as well. He guided the land and agricultural policy suited to the island then, through dedicated public servants such as C.L.Wickremesinghe, the grand-father of the present Leader of the opposition - the author of the hitherto unrevised Land Development ordinance and the Land Settlement Ordinance - agriculturist W. C. Joachim and irrigationist W. Guthrie, and the land technician R.L. Brohier, doyean of surveys.
He lived and dined with Malaria sticken colonists for days end, just to make them not abandon the rough going colony settlements and return to their cosy home gardens in the up-country.
In 1936 he visioned an Agricultural credit scheme, and even spoke of debt conciliation of the farmers, Dietetics, Animal husbandry, and imbibed on the farmer the need of cooperation both for cultivation and marketing.
Mr. Dudley Senanayake went a step further in his green revolution, and thereafter, it was a dead end for agriculture in this country. Mrs. Bandaranaike, as Dr. Sarath Amunugama candidly enumerates in his latest book the 'Last Struggle' " ruined the plantation economy of this country", "as well as education, by nationalizing the plantation economy and the denominational schools."
What followed for 27 years is what we are today vis-à-vis agriculture; the eastern paradise living on the begging bowl off the Indian farmer for rice, sugar, oranges, and apples; on the Nepalese and the Australian farmer for dhal and lentils; and the American Lousiana belt for wheat; and shamelessly "' Oft on the New Zealand husbandry for babies milk. Let us not talk of Salmons and Sardines.
The malady lies in the fact that all Post independent governments jettisoned long term plans of agriculture for short term policies of vote bargaining. Diversified intensive agriculture was abandoned.
The plantation economy was eaten up. Land alienated in pocket blocks to satisfy housing, hunger, cultivation of vital crops such a sugar, ruined, consequent to governmental grabs. Lentil and peanut farming not talked of when large tracts of dry zone agricultural lands were allowed to lie fallow.
Inland Fishery cultivation which D.S. Senanayake introduced to the tanks of the N.C.P. just not furthered for fear of Buddhist sentimental reasons of the Sangha who have to be fed on fishes; but not caught to be fed on fishes. Large scale inland Tanks are being silted up due to haphazard denudation of watershed forestlands.
Stream and river reservations alienated to political henchmen and even river beds are sand dried. Village forests reserved for cattle herding felled, alienated and erased out of the final village plans. Riverbeds handed out, and road, railway reserves, tunneled in and even paddy fields mined for gems at the behest of politicians.
That Irrigation Pioneer of Sri Lanka, King Dhatusena, in the 6th Century ventured into irrigation canal development after giving up the construction of small village tanks as unecomical.
Instead of desilting large tanks and bringing another 30% of the lands now abandoned for lack of holding capacity, we are grandiloquently talking of reviving 10,000 small tanks, by lotteries to find the money for the purpose. What pompous dream schemes to further agricultural development of the country, once the granary of the east.
Of nearly a million over acres of paddy land in the country, we are today cultivating only about 500,000 acres for Maha and not even half of that for Yala due to lack of water. Nearly a hundred thousand acres are completely abandoned as being not tenable for paddy cultivation.
Even colonization schemed, 5 acre and three acre blocks are becoming uneconomical for cultivation for the small farmer, consequent to the high rise of input, soaring prices of agricultural labour and ever decreasing irrigation facilities. Furthermore, nearly million acres of colonization scheme, dry lands are barely cropped.
While we are the third highest in paddy yields, we are also the only country which has allowed such large extents of agricultural land to lie fallow. In addition to the paddy lands about another 100,000 acres of plantation land which were economically used for cultivation of tea, rubber, and cocoa are abandoned for lack of agricultural labour. While rubber production statistics reveal a deficiency, the reduction in the production of tea is not reflected conspicuously as the reduced production is covered by tea smallholdings.
Our inattention to agricultural, development of the country is oblivious from the act that five ordinances applicable in respect of land alienation in the country have not been revisioned for the last 60 years, even though land utilization has become varied for the last 40 years.
Land has become the main bait of the vote hungry politician, and hence we are wasting away the most valuable asset of the country.
It is really unfortunate that we have so far not identified the problems of irrigation we faced with. This small land area equivalent to that of Taiwan is blessed with twelve perennial rivers, majority of the waters of which flow into the sea utilized. The real problem of irrigation is careful conservation and proper utilization.
Emulating the words of King Prakramabahu, permit me to quote what D.S. said in 1936 "the lesson to be learnt is that the problem need to be tackled on a large and in a systematic manner: no mere pottering on isolated tanks here and there will suffice to give the country the water it needs for the full development of the cultivable area."
This is what he further said; of the volume of water stored in them is so small and the lose by evaporation is so great that it is no exaggeration to say that for a considerable period of the year they hardly fulfill the purpose for which they were intended.
Attempts made from time to time to fill them by Sinhalese kings failed due to lack of water after rapid denudation of forests of the catchments area and now it is worse with the white planters opening up most of the catchments area lands for commercial crops. "
That being said of small tanks, let me now turn to the other causes of the on going crisis situation. In the absence of long-term development plans piece meal directions of politician have almost crippled the utilization value of our educated agricultural personal as they are not being gainfully directed. We were the foremost in Asia in agricultural management in the fifties and sixties.
Dr. Panabokke was the one and only authority in dry farming in the fifties, long before Dr. Chiddan Singe, Professor of Agronomy of the University of Uttra Pradesh, India and the then well known authority in India. He successfully grew Dhall in Maha Iluppallama but the project vanished without ministerial support.
When I was in the Kegalla District in the late fifties, Mr. Norman Gunatillake developed potatoes in experimentation plots in Kegalle and today we are self sufficient in the crop due to Mr. Dudley Senanayake'a and Norman's efforts despite the political opposition of the potatoes cartels in Sri Lanka, including high officials of the Agriculture Department.
Both D.S. Senanayake and Dudley as Ministers of Agriculture spent regular times at the Peradeniya Research station discussing crop problems with the researchers.
They were born farmers, but to day, indifferent ministerial attitudes have hampered both research and Crop development.
Under the denominational education system a practical one-hour was a must in the class curriculum for agriculture. The necessity of an agricultural bias in the training of the young was considered as one of the important aspects of our agricultural problem in Sri Lanka by Mr. D.S. Senanayake.
Today we have over 30 doctors of agriculture hibernating in Gannoruwa, piled up with loads of paper work any thing other than agriculture, and without being effectively made use of. With every turn table of miniseries it is a new agricultural ministerial policy.
We have a rudder broken Department of Agriculture despite the fact, that since independence two Presidents and two Prime Ministers were Ministers of agriculture of the country.
The days of Home Garden Competitions, farmer popular agricultural exhibitions, Govi Raja selections, educational trips for farmers, are gone. There in nothing in the so-called model Va'ines for the farmers to be educated on except the home garden plots of the resident instructors.
Since the land commission of 1950 none of those in authority have even bothered to review the land policy for the last 54 years. Land orders laid out by C.L. Wickremesinghe are still in vogue. We have not stepped beyond the limits of peasant colonization. '
When the world over agricultural economy is based on intensive agriculture and farmer owner ship of economically viable units; the minimum being 5 hectares. We have in a very limited way gone in to inter cropping of plantation lands. By no means have we gone into diversification and intensive cultivation of paddy lands.
Mr. D.S Senanayake said in 1936 as a general principle it may be laid down that the chief problems of the cultivator is the diversification of his agriculture." We have never resorted to dry crop farming in paddy lands when there is insufficient water for paddy cultivation.
All political parties since independence have ruined our agriculture, except that of producing rice. Day by day the farmer is being pushed into being a dependent cultivator fed on subsidies and agriculture loans, while even newly independent countries such as Vietnam, and the historical farmers such as Taiwanese and the Thais are reaping millions of foreign exchange by cornering the American and Japanese markets for subsidiary agricultural products.
| Permalink | E-mail this post 
