SL plans to overcome food crisis
Sri Lanka is attempting to overcome its food crisis by maintaining prices at current levels while ensuring that fertiliser reaches farmers on time and insisting that all households carry out some form of cultivation wherever possible.
As part of the national food security plan, authorities have come up with a number of bodies established at different levels like the National Food Security and Nutrition Council; the National Combined Mechanism to Review and Monitor the policies on National level Policies; Technical Committee to prepare Action Plans, Chairman of the Presidential Committee on National Food Security Dr. Suren Batagoda told the Business Times.
These are then worked out at the provincial levels, through the 334 District Secretaries and the 14, 022 Grama Sevaka levels to initiate the action plans for economic revival and food security through the Grama Niladhari, Health Officer, Economic Development Officer, Agriculture and Development Officer.
He noted that engaging school principals, temple priests are vital in the process and the Grama Sevaka officers have been asked to visit every single house to encourage people to engage in agriculture.
Dr. Batagoda explained that while fertiliser is available in the retail market the prices have been brought down to Rs.22,000 per 50 kg bag.
With cost of production increasing, the authorities are looking at obtaining assistance from banks, NGOs and other international aid agencies, Dr. Batagoda said.
Currently he pointed out that maize is the key issue as they are facing a problem with a lack of required amount of seed as a result of which they will be cultivating about 110,000 hectares for the Maha season. “We are working with India as well to obtain 500 metric tonnes of seed,” he said.
Commenting on the target likely to be achieved this Maha season, he pointed out they were hoping to achieve 70 per cent of the yield.
With no shortage of urea he noted that they were hoping to obtain the 12,000 MT of new orders next week with the balance amount of 125, 000 MT said to be available in the second week of November. This balance amount, Dr. Batagoda explained will be sufficient for the second and third application of fertiliser.
He also said that considering the imports already carried out for rice, there will not be a shortage of these stocks and the increased dependence on India and China should be limited.
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