Granary of the East that has lost its way

By Neville de Silva

I make no apologies-and no apologies are needed- for turning away from the usual haps and mishaps of politicians and war and peace to delve into a subject that has been seriously affected by lackadaisical politics and the ongoing conflict. It might not be what is called here a “sexy” subject, a word popularised by the intelligence dossier that the then British Prime Minister Tony Blair used to take the country to war in Iraq. Still it is an issue that calls for serious attention by governments and policy makers because ultimately it centres on national food security which appears to be affected by inattentive politics and other man-made problems such as climate change.

In recent weeks we have been reading reports of the rising price of rice in Sri Lanka, prices which are unprecedented in living memory. My fellow columnist “The Economist” drew attention to the seriousness of the issue in his column last week in this newspaper. He said that current prices were touching Rs 100 per kilogram of rice which has been unheard of in this country. What has happened to a country which in ancient times was known as the granary of the East?

While “The Economist” has provided some of the reasons for the decline in agricultural production which has, unfortunately for us, coincided with a rise in international prices, he has obviously not had the space to deal with a range of other issues that impinge on the problem. The truth is that both local neglect and global developments have contributed to the current situation and will continue to do so until and unless we take remedial measures at home to mitigate the problem. We have little or no control over some global phenomena such as climate change which have already begun to cause serious damage to eco-systems around the world and increased global warming to dangerous levels. Even if we have no control over some developments we could at least act collectively to prevent further damage to our environment by taking stern action against those that do such damage.

Unfortunately, among those who cause such serious damage are politicians or those who have the patronage of politicians and so the legal action that should follow usually never happens. Just last week I was at a discussion at Marlborough House on climate change organised by the Commonwealth Foundation with the help of the Commonwealth Secretariat. This particular discussion centred round forests and biodiversity but speeches and discussions ranged wider. One of the speakers Dr Robert Watson, the former chief scientist of the World Bank who I had met before in Cologne a couple of years ago at a similar gathering, repeated a point that he made then and is worth recalling. Dr Watson said that as climate change continues to affect our planet, the dry areas of the earth will get drier and the wet areas wetter. In short the droughts are going to get worse and flooding will increase.

Now, relate this piece of scientific data to our own island. Those who know their agriculture and particularly the rice growing areas of Sri Lanka, will realise that we cultivate paddy in both the dry zone and the wet zone. Though the dry zone districts provide most of the paddy, or used to, there is still significant cultivation in areas such as Kalutara, Galle, Gampaha and even Colombo. So if Dr Watson’s predictions are correct, and there is no reason to doubt them, paddy production overall is bound to be adversely affected in the years to come due to climate change. One of the causes for the decreasing rainfall, particularly in the dry zone areas, is the denuding of our forests. As Jim Ball, chairman of the Commonwealth Forestry Association said at last week’s meeting Sri Lanka’s forests have disappeared at a faster rate in the first years of this century than the corresponding period in the 1990s.There is plenty of illicit felling happening in Sri Lanka. Sometimes it is done hand in glove with politicians and at others in collusion with officials in various government institutions. Unless we take immediate steps to combat this and introduce sustainable forest management Sri Lanka will suffer catastrophic consequences.

My fellow columnist was correct when he said that at one time we not only boasted of achieving self sufficiency in our staple food but even derived self satisfaction by exporting quantities of rice. But, unlike other areas of production such as industry, we know only too well that agriculture is affected by the vagaries of weather. Yet, how much has been done to instil our farmers with the idea of water management. We also know that rice production needs large amounts of water and we had got accustomed to providing irrigation water during the Maha (major) season when it should be mainly a rain-fed crop while the Yala (small) should be irrigated production.

I suppose I am one of the few journalists- if not the only one in the English language media- who has taken a sustained interest in and written extensively on agriculture. In my early years at the Daily News I not only wrote weekly features and news stories on agriculture, encouraged by forward-thinking editors such as Ernest Corea who gave me a free rein, but also had the opportunity to travel the length and breadth of Sri Lanka with the then Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake who took a particularly keen interest in agriculture and increasing food production. From him I learned a lot about the subject. Unfortunately, most governments and ministers that followed gradually neglected agriculture and ignored the fact that external dependence for one’s food made a country extremely vulnerable not only to market forces but to foreign powers. Food security is critical and will become increasingly so in the decades ahead as the consequences of climate change takes effect.

Today, we are reaping the results of years of political neglect and the breakdown of institutions that were geared to help the agricultural sector. In the old days there were state institutions such as the Paddy Marketing Board, the Marketing Department, Fertilizer Corporation, Milk Board and others that were intended to help the agricultural sector and ensure that purchasing, marketing and provision of inputs were carried out in timely fashion. I don’t know whether any of these still exist, probably only the latter two if at all. Locally it is the political apathy, except at election time, and the institutional collapse that have led to the neglect of agriculture and the farming community.

One could understand a country that lacks the natural resources and the aptitude turning to other economic pursuits to maintain itself. But Sri Lanka used to be, and I suppose it still is despite the emphasis on manufacturing and service industries, an agricultural country. Certainly the vast majority of its population is rural based. Is it not a crying shame that we still have to import much of our food, even our staple rice?

Indonesia in the 1980s used to be arguably Asia’s leading rice exporter. More recently it has become a rice importing nation largely because it followed IMF and World Bank advice. We might have been in the same situation had we followed similar policies advocated by the IMF about a decade or less ago. Thankfully we did not. If this government wants to break away from the Colombo-centrism and return to the rural base it claims to have, then it should pay far more attention to agriculture-particularly paddy production- and have agriculture and agriculture-related ministers who are ready to muddy their feet and away from their air conditioned offices.