Buffaloes are giving the farmers of Gerikatuwa, a village in Kataragama, a hard time, destroying their crops, which include vegetables, bananas and coconut.
Farmer W. M. Jayasundara says there are some 100 families living in Gerikatuwa, and they prize their two-acre plots of cultivated land. He said
he had put down 400 coconut saplings, but is now left with about 150. The rest were eaten by buffaloes. He said that some land-owners had even given up cultivating their lands as there was no protection from buffaloes.
The Sunday Times spoke to several Gerikatuwa cattle owners, who said they had no pasture on which their buffaloes could graze, so they were compelled to release the animals in the hope they would somehow find food. |
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