By Quintus Perera in Tambuththegama and Norochcholai

Onion farm at Norochcholai. Pix by Quintus Perera

The Cargills Group is going full steam ahead with its Rs 500 million investment in the recently cleared-eastern province. The ‘Food City’ company has already set up two outlets in Trincomalee and plan to open six more Food City outlets in the three districts including Batticaloa and Ampara. Plans are also afoot to start vegetables, fruit, meat and fish and milk purchasing centres in the east plus a rice milling plant in Ampara.

Two weeks back Cargills took 45 farmers from various districts of the Eastern province to visit Sambuththegama in Anuradhapura. All of them stayed overnight in Anuradhapura and the following day they were taken to Norochcholai near Puttalam on a guided study tour to learn farming techniques.

It was organized by the Ministry of Nation Building and Eastern Reawakening Programme and sponsored by the World Bank. Along with the farmers there were a large number of instructors. These instructors as well as the farmers collected as much information as possible on farming techniques used by farmers whom they met.

Nimal Rohan

At Tambuththegama, these farmers met W Anuruddha Deshapriya, a 22 year-old farmer who along with a few others cultivate 7 ½ acres paddy and other vegetables. Mr Deshapriya told the visiting farmers that he has studied up to GCE (OL), but instead of farming if he had gone to any other job the maximum he could get per month would be around Rs 10,000 to 15,000.

He said that through farming his average net profit per month comes to around Rs 40,000 and some months with good harvest and better prices the income would reach to more than Rs 150,000. He said that with the backing of Cargills their regular incomes are ensured.

Tamil farmers from the East, including several women, walked long distances under the hot sun to reach large farms where they met the Sinhala farmers. The eastern farmers were so fascinated, they inquired in detail how the Tambuththegama farmers successfully cultivate. Some of the visitors collected seeds and small plants to be taken to their areas to have test planting.

It was also very encouraging to see how the Sinhala farmers divulging all the details of farming techniques to their brother farmers from the other side of the divide. Gopalasingham Menaka, a young female farmer from Trincomalee, said she grew chillies and onions in small quantities and sold to the local market. Ms Menaka, whose husband is also engaged in farming, said they still adopt primitive methods of farming and expressed happiness to join the Cargills farmer community and grow vegetables in the modern way and supply to Cargills. When these farmers reached Norochcholai, not only the Eastern farmers, but also the few media personnel who travelled from Colombo were stunned to see the amazing cultivation there. It was as if they were walking through an Israeli farm.

The Norochcholai farmers use ultra modern farming techniques – drip-irrigation and sprinklers. There is no more ‘Kalagedi’ pot watering. Other than carrot and leeks all other up-country vegetable are grown here. These Eastern farmers attentively listened to many success stories from Norochcholai with the best success story comings from M. Peter Karunaratne whose face depicted a typical farmer.
He settled in Norochcholai as a labourer after moving from Wariyapola, initially at a two-rupee a day wage.

Eventually he got 10 acres considered to be barren sandy land and toiled very hard. Today he is a father of eight children, some married, and the 10 acres are cultivated more or less as a community farm, though each of the children are allocated a certain amount of land.

It was a stunning success story to learn that the crop from this entire 10 acres would fetch a massive Rs 1.5 million per month and one of the sons, Nimal Rohan (25) told The Sunday Times FT that his share would be a staggering Rs 150,000 per month. They are the exclusive suppliers of spring onions to Cargills. Mr Rohan said, “Why go to the Middle East or even Western countries for employment.
This is a gold mine. If you are courageous enough to dig and grow, you can earn a fortune.”
Another success story is M. S. M. Yashir also from Norochcholai who is a spinach grower and a regular supplier to Cargills.

Spinach doesn’t normally fetch much profit as they are sold at low prices. He would supply part of his harvest at around Rs 30 a kilo to Cargills but the balance harvest would have to be sold at a lower price in the open market. But now he is a proud owner of a lorry that he has bought for Rs 750,000 purely with the profits of his cultivation.

To facilitate and arrange the meetings between the eastern farmers and farmers of Sambuththegama and Norochcholai were three Cargills officers - Haridas Fernando, Agricultural Manager, Dr Sunil J Navaratne, Director, Human Capital and Senaka Amarasinghe, Deputy General Manager, Logistics.
In 2006, Cargills was responsible for one percent of the Sri Lanka’s rice production, 1.8 percent of the fruit and vegetable production and three percent of the livestock production.
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