Though the World Food Programme made a huge blunder this week in claiming in one of its reports that 30 per cent of Sri Lankans go without food for days due to the spiraling cost of living, it is true that the cost of rice on average has doubled in price this year despite the recently imposed price controls.
There is however some bumper good news coming to the consumer from rice growing areas around the country, even though commodity prices continue to skyrocket around the world.
The Census and Statistics Department revealed this week that a record Yala harvest is being harvested this month and is estimated at 1,572,524 tonnes from a record 437,000 hectares sown. While this can be partially attributed to the free availability of subsidized fertilizer, the main reason has been the record prices being fetched by paddy since early this year.Census and Statistics Department Director Agriculture Division A.M.U. Dissanayake said coupled with the good 2007/2008 Maha harvest of 2,125,000 tonnes that the country recorded early this year, it should mean the country need not import any rice for the rest of the year.
“Sri Lanka with an annual 104 kgs. per capita consumption of rice will not need to import rice to meet that demand with the successful harvesting of the Yala crop,” he said.
Even the 1.5 million tonne estimate is a conservative one based on an average yield estimate of 4260 kgs. per hectare. According to the Statistics Department in the 2007 Yala season the country harvested 1,158,148 tonnes of paddy from 291,375 hectares sown with a yield of 4543 kgs. per hectare.
Asked why such a low yield had been estimated, the Director said it was on the basis that in this Yala though the farmers had brought a record acreage under the plough, it was primarily rain-fed and therefore the vagaries of weather had to be taken into account.
The price incentive to grow paddy has been such that even conflict-ridden areas had seen a big increase in the acreage brought under cultivation. Kilinochchi district which recorded 3561 hectares under paddy in Yala 2007 increased the area under paddy to 4087 hectares in the current Yala season. The area under paddy in Vavuniya district went up from 586 hectares to 4,937 ha., and in Mannar district from 843 ha. to 869 ha. Only Mullaitivu has shown a slight drop in acreage under paddy from 1862 ha. to 1821 ha. Even such highly crowded districts like Colombo and Gampaha have seen big increases in the acreage brought under paddy during the current Yala season The area under paddy in Colombo district has gone up from 879 ha to 3131 ha. and in Gampaha district from 2407 ha. to 6704 ha.
The previous highest Yala paddy harvest was recorded in 2005 when Sri Lanka produced 1,233,000 tonnes of paddy from 387,000 ha.
Due mainly to vagaries in the weather two key rice growing areas have, however recorded a drop in paddy production this Yala season. It is estimated that output in Polonnaruwa district will drop to 201,524 tonnes from 221,598 tonnes registered at the last Yala harvest and the output in Ampara district will decline to 246, 953 tonnes from 255,935 tonnes. But these declines have been more than offset by massive increases in output in Kurunegala and Anuradhapura districts.
(All these statistics can be viewed on the Census Department web site: statistics.gov.lk)
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