Dr U Pethiyagoda writing in The Island of Thursday 17 April under the title I’ve quoted above, hands out punch packed comment and sensible advice on how to go beyond mere pontificating planning. He talks of potato cultivation not being ideal for Sri Lanka; diversifying crops and getting away from the idea that agriculture equates itself to rice; utilizing acres of abandoned land for vegetable cultivation and using our demobbed soldiers, once the war is won in the North as it has been in the East, to cultivate.

Dr Pethiyagoda starts his article with a very pertinent observation: …"erudite planners and agriculturists gather to formulate ‘A new policy for agricultural development.’" He speaks of the endless pondering over pastries and iced coffee and the useless reinventing of the wheel. I add the before and afterwards. Very often these seminars take place in star class hotels and the night brings on drinks, fun and games. Dr Pethiyagoda brands the reports that emanate from seminars ‘hogwash’, ‘cods wallop’ and even b…s…. a k a cowdung! Don’t we agree with him 200 percent! Tripe is another word I add. Recently, however, a one day meeting was conducted at Temple Trees chaired by the President on managing the costs and supply of food essentials. The President leading the meeting gave us hope. We expect something positive to come out of this gathering.

The innumerable number of presidential commissions and other commissions and directions for investigative reports on this matter of import and that comes to mind. But what the reports said are not made known to the public. We are now sick of this eyewash.

If submitted by the commission or inquiry board, the reports must be locked away, never even perused. The memory span of the public is ever so short, very conveniently for all.

Dr Pethiyagoda mentions jak and breadfruit as rice substitutes and says (correcting me in an earlier article) that potato though fine is not cost effective to be grown locally for several reasons. I add bathala and manioc to his list of rice alternatives as the staple for a meal; manioc with a slight tremor of trepidation since the connotation that always comes to mind is the JVP’s skewed cry to uproot tea and grow manioc on estates. I don’t need to spell out the absurdity of this policy; even a kid will mention foreign exchange and that there’s more to life than a starch-full belly.

At the end of his article Dr P invites people to comment: "These are just a few random thoughts which it is hoped will stimulate a discussion and pooling of proposals which may be of immense value to our policy makers and planners in their deliberations." I may well be the first to throw in my two cents worth. I do hope others will follow. If many write about this problem we are facing: overdependence on rice and the global and local sure-fire increase in food prices and shortages in the near future, the government may sit up and take note. If we do it right, our people need not go hungry since we have land, water, the right temperatures and the monsoons, though erratic now, still keeping to their original schedule. Primarily we are an agricultural country so let the government lead us into agriculture in the correct way – not difficult at all. Grow and get food into our people’s mouths and bellies in the face of a global food shortage. If we don’t sit up, take note of local and global trends regards food and act fast to damage-control, we will be in big trouble. We in Sri Lanka have not shown of late this ability to recognize danger and act to avert it, whether it be economic inflation or a cost ineffective budget airline.

Commitment

The first suggestion I add to Dr P’s very succinct and practical suggestions is commitment right down the line. Starting from H E the Prez who is committed, work down to the bevy of ministers with and without portfolios in the agriculture field and the state secretaries and then onto the provincial councilors and down to agricultural officers and field officers. I know that all right thinking people with no political bias will agree that commitment is lacking in the public sector. Take private companies and privatized enterprises. They work. Just consider the improvement in services given the client by the SLT while in pre-privatized days one waited days on end for a repairman and months for the installation of a telephone.

We remember with what clockwork precision and correct chains of command agency houses managed tea estates were run.

Go back in time a mite further. How did the Father of the Nation and his son, Dudley Senanayake, get the agriculture of the country moving? Of course there were stories how the son was cheated on the myth that a green revolution had taken place in paddy cultivation by officers hoodwinking him on statistics derived from experimental plots. Be that as it may, DS particularly enthused agriculture officers and the farmers themselves by showing committed solidarity with them. Gal Oya turned green under his guiding hand.

I well remember, though then a very young kid, the Kottukachiya Farm close to Anamaduwa when this town was almost a wilderness with a couple of boutiques and the Divisional Revenue Officer doubling as the police too. Well, acres of forest were cleared (this was not tantamount to the denudation of the forest cover of the land since the percentage of forest cover then must surely have been over 50 percent, now down to less than 20. Also it was more shrubland than forest). People from crowded urban slums were settled in this early colonization scheme and the vegetables and fruits grown were diverse, abundant and luxuriant. Methods were set in motion for transporting produce to markets. Was the abundance of the crops due solely to the fertility of virgin soil? Not at all! More kudos were due to the efficient farm manager and his hardworking assistants and of course to the settlers themselves who now owned land and were looked after. There was commitment and the will to improve and shake off dependency on the government. Now everyone expects freebies. Graduates expect free education and top jobs just handed out to them; housewives free foodstuff or at least subsidized food items.

Decimate the middleman

He’s the devil who deprives the farmer of his fair share for the work he’s done and burdens the consumer with artificially increased prices. We heard that one important person with connections to a more important person controlled the paddy market, and sent the rice grower to near suicide and the consumer and his children to malnourishment and increasing starvation. We also know that the chain of stores that invites you to step in gedera yana gaman, sells fresh vegetables and fruit cheap due to their strategy of buying direct from source, from the farmer, eliminating a racketeer between seller/producer and buyer/consumer.

Not too many cooks, please

Too many advisers, too many know-alls, too many politicians who stifle the people who really know what has to be done is another modern phenomenon that blights the agriculture field. Remember how the Director of Agriculture and persons like scientists, agronomists and agriculturists were given responsibility and a free hand to get on with their jobs. Result: work got done, agriculture improved. One example – the experimental station at Mahailluppallama. Now the quest is for fast bucks, not increasing yields or enhancing crops.

Elimination of extravagance urgently needed

Speak with a housewife, a village daily who travels miles to earn a pittance cleaning homes, a three wheeler driver, an honest wage earner and what do they all say almost with their first breath: those in power must cut down on extravagance. And what is this extravagance? Oh, so many things, they’d say. They will quote first the whale of a cabinet; luxury overseas trips with B&B and other meals and entertaining guests in the most expensive hotels; rampant bribery and corruption; import of super duper cars which cost millions; and seminars! The millions or even trillions saved could go to improving the lot of the common man, which includes you, me and the farmer often losing the battle to keep way from that bottle of insecticide.

As I was writing this article, Dr Nimal Sanderatne, in Biz First, on MTV’s News 1st Thursday 17th said that funds are withheld from the agricultural sector and thus no new research of any significance has been carried out in recent years. He quoted the green revolution of the 1960s and 70s due to development of new strains of paddy suited to our climate. Then money was allocated and thus experimentation was fully funded and encouraged by the government of the day; with positive results.