By S. T. Ranasinghe
Hans G. of Germany writing to the 'Opinion' columns of the Island of 21.4.01. says that Ambuluwawa, an imposing hill rising from the valley close to Gampola, is now an environmental disaster. In a letter to the Island of 3.4.01, I made a passing reference to this, the much vaunted flight of fancy of a Cabinet Minister that has ravaged a peaceful natural reserve. A year or more ago the Sunday times gave the story of the inherent destruction that would accompany this grandiose scheme designed to feed a politician's vanity. A man all the way from Germany sees it now, but our environmentalists, more concerned with garbage dumps, never saw this or perhaps never cared to raise even a bleat of protest when natural vegetation 3,500 feet above sea level was being hacked away and natural rock formations blasted, with huge chunks of granite spilling over the mountain side, to trace an access road to the summit.

It has dawned on the government that water is a precious commodity, and it has formulated a water resources management policy to conserve, control and manage water and its usage on the one hand, and on the other a senior Cabinet Minister, none other than Minister of Agriculture, D. M. Jayaratne a man who should be close to nature by virtue of his cabinet portfolio, is denuding mountain tops unconcerned that water vapour condensation takes place at high altitudes and trickles down in rivulets feeding springs and streams to sustain both animal and plant life.

The master plan of the Minister's Magnum Opus has provision for star-class hotels and conference halls in the clouds, which brings to mind the lines of the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley on Ozymandias a desert ruler of yore who proclaimed to all the world: "Behold my handiwork ye mortals and despair". Ozymandeas raised his edifices, whose ruins alone Shelley beheld, in the dry, burning desert sands and he had every reason to be proud of himself and his work. Today's story is an inversion of that - destroy the verdure and create a wasteland to pamper to politicians' egos with concrete jungles.

What of agriculture? We hear so much about vegetable exports and self-sufficiency in rice production supported by make-believe statistics cooked up by sycophantic officials. When the UNP was in power a story was splashed on TV that a Dambulla farmer with a big-onion harvest from a fourth of an acre had become a 'Lakshapathiya' (a tenth of a millionaire!). A few years ago a few bags of big-onions were exported to the Maldives and once more the State trumpets blared that Sri Lanka was now an exporter of big-onions. Churchill classified lies under three heads - 'lies, damned lies and statistics' but we Sri Lankans are treated to a fourth variety endemic to us and honed to perfection by the epidemic of politicians afflicting this land. This species of lies is called 'gal palena boru' (literally, rock -splitting lies), of which we are and always have been self-sufficient. Could we be otherwise, with 99 per cent of our rulers being honours graduates in this 'discipline'?

Today's agriculture is a complex applied science. The man who fit into the top slot must be one with the requisite scientific background. Fifty years ago a village gamarala cropping indigenous, six-month varieties of paddy like heenati or haathial was an expert in his field, but not any more.

Cultivation practices have to be in step with what the agricultural scientist sees under his microscope, determines in his lab, tests in field trials and then passes on to the farmer. The indigenous varieties of paddy are gone for good, with every new hybrid that comes from the researchers the farmers know-how has to be updated.

India is light-years ahead of us in plant research. The techniques of plant cell and tissue culture is now established, in numerous research labs throughout the world. The tissue culture technique has been applied to improve plant species. In India, employing the shoot tip culture method with a piece of shoot apex, as many as 8,000 grape plants have been cloned in three to four months. Numerous varieties of ornamental, woody, vegetable and crop species using micro-propagation techniques in the lab have been perfected, eg. onions, sugar beet, maize, orchids, coffee, eucalyptus.

One of the most significant developments in the field of plant tissue culture during recent years has been the isolation, culture and fusion of protoplasts (naked plant cells obtained by removal of the cell wall). The protoplasts of tomato and potato were successfully fused in 1978 and resulted in a new type of plant called pomato or topato. Complete plant species have been generated using this technique eg. carrot, sunflower, cabbage, wheat, maize, sugarcane, tomato, potato, tobacco and brinjal to name a few.

In this field it appears our agricultural scientists have had little or no success. This is underscored by the Minister's own words in public to the effect that he would be seeking the assistance of Thai experts to kick start fruit cultivation in Sri Lanka. This is a pretty sad indictment on the Department of Agriculture which 50 odd years after independence has to turn to Thailand to help us out. Our universities perhaps do not have research budgets, so they are out of the picture. Those who should take centre stage have fallen on their jobs and the country is the loser.

President Kumaratunga has been pragmatic in placing the Science and Technology Ministry in the hands of a university don with the requisite background. Tea, rubber and coconut under the Plantations Ministry, though shored up by private capital in the main and despite incidental ups and downs are not in the doldrums like conventional agriculture. Agriculture today can only be successfully tackled by the leadership of one who has the appropriate scientific background to understand the technicalities of the subject and if the need arises call the bluff of those who should be doing a job of work but are not.

Passing draconian laws to take over agricultural land of those who in the opinion of the Minister are not doing enough with their land and distributing it among party hacks is a red herring drawn by the Minister to cover up his own nakedness in the face of his litany of failures as the Minister in charge of Agriculture. Agriculture has become a dirty word today because of mounting costs, lack of markets and overdoses of lies. Those who are still at it have no way out because it's either that or starvation.

Maybe the Minister of Housing will take a cue from his colleague the Minister of Agriculture and tell the public: 'If you have vacant rooms in your house you are not putting it to optimum use, rent them out or face a take over of the house by the State.' Anything is possible with PA politicians.