Was the sudden world shortage in principal food crops seen during the last few months, especially rice and wheat, something unexpected? A number of explanations have been offered for the global crisis including the freezing of land under food crops urbanization, shift from cereals to meat as in China, global warming which has led to cold climates which have affected the rice crop in China and Vietnam. Even a shortfall in rice production in Australia has been added. None of these singly seems to provide a straight answer.

However, how serious the situation has become can be seen from food riots reported in a number of countries around the world from Asia to Africa and the Caribbean. In Asia food riots were reported in Philippines, Indonesia and Bangladesh. In Philippines and Bangladesh the Presidents have asked people to switch to other crops like potatoes. In India too, rice prices have reportedly escalated. She could not come to the rescue of Sri Lanka with emergency supplies owing to the growing problem of shortfalls there.

In the 1970s most grain- shortage countries recorded green revolutions after global shortages recorded in wheat and rice in the 1950s. Our own failure to secure rice from our traditional suppliers, Myanmar and Thailand, compelled us to look for a new supplier in China. I have pointed out in these columns with my experience as the buyer of rice from China for four years, that crop failure in Myanmar was not the real cause for the shortage in 1952. Myanmar's entire rice crop had been pledged to China for five years. So what was told to Sir Oliver Goonetileke in Yangon was a big yarn. China was getting ready for her experiment with agricultural cooperatives and for requisitioning of grain for export and built up a stock. When China had to deliver grain without Burmese stocks, severe requisitioning plus failure of the Leap Forward in agriculture brought about famine conditions, now described as the "greatest famine in the 20th century."

If one looks at the situation in Sri Lanka today, it should be clear that the present crisis was not unexpected. The writing was on the wall. The Pettah wholesale merchants, whom the late W. Dahanayake told crowds at election propaganda meetings in 1947, were "blood sucking Indian merchants" hanged on transferring their trade licenses in the name of local natamies and shop-sweepers even after Mrs. Sirima Bandaranaike introduced the Ceylonisation policy in the 1960s while many Jaffna traders took their places. I remember a few Jaffna traders coming to me (I was an Assistant Secretary in the Citizenship Division) with lists of Indian TRP holders who were over-staying visa and giving information about their trade stocks. It was not because they loved the Prime Minister's policies but they wanted to grab the trade. How true was the situation can be judged when I say, I was reminded by another colleague from Jaffna, that the father-in-law of two of my Foreign Office colleagues from Jaffna became the "Potatoe-king" thereafter. I am not suggesting that my colleagues had any hand in this except, perhaps, to identify me then through whom they could try to get the Indians out. That is another story - how the stranglehold on the economy shifted hands! Prabhakaran must be laughing his guts out in the Vanni! One may even ask if he is behind the rice war when the war in the Vanni is going against him!

No. 1 would not say that. I knew how the rice merchant community in Asia responded from my days of rice purchasing 50 years ago. They are a well-knit community. An economist in Philippines wrote in the columns of The Island last week that in that country cartels were behind creating the artificial scarcity and price hikes. The Pettah rice cartels too knew before hand how the world market situation was and the prices were going to escalate. So the prices started escalating from the beginning of this year from Rs. 55/- in January to Rs. 65/= to 70 by February and was set to reach Rs. 100/= by the Sinhalese New Year. Supply became short not because shortfall in local production but through manipulation of the market.

Looking, back, one may ask how is that rice prices were maintained, globally at stable prices for over half a century from the end of the 19th century to the time of the WW II? In his recently published book Palm Fringed Coast: History of Trincomalee - Batticaloa Diocese (1895-1967) Fr. John W. Lang refers, among other substantial things, to the economic life of people in this diocese. Commenting on food prices he writes that at the turn of the last century, (1891), a bushel of rice cost Rs. 3.64; [Approx. 10 cts. per measure); wheat flour was twenty cents a pound and wheat bread twenty five; sugar 18 cents; salt two cents; and tea was more costly than coffee- Rs. 1.50 per pound as against 75 cents for coffee.

Comparing these figures with prices which prevailed in the local market in our village down south in the early 1940s, i.e., the very early stages of WWII, (my father's family were wholesale merchants) I recall that the best of imported rice such as Mutu-samba and Mal-kora (both these were fine varieties of rice unlike what is sold today under these names) were retailing around 8 cts to 10 cts per measure (Seer) or Seru in Sinhala. I remember as a child under 10 years then, the price going up to 10 -12 cts. just around the beginning of the war. The price of Milchar as a parboiled rice is called here, (misnamed?) which was preferred by the toilers was even less. So in the fifty years from 1891 which Fr. Long describes and to the time of the WWII (early 1940s) there had not been much change in the price of (imported ) rice.

The average selling price of rice (paddy) in the Madras Presidency was 0.94 cts. per bushel during 1881 and 1882. (approximately, .03 cts per seer). With custom duties on both sides added, Indian rice (paddy) was selling in the Jaffna market at Rs. 1.50 per bushel while Batticaloa rice competed well. Transport charges represented 50 cts of the cost of Indian rice. In the Colombo bazaar Indian paddy was Rs. 1.37 1/2 per bushel. This would work out to around .10 cts for a seer. (roughly a kilo) for cleaned imported Indian rice. These details about Madras prices and comparative Batticaloa prices were presented by E-Elliot, C.C.S. to the meeting of the Royal Asiatic Society on August 11, 1885 attended mainly by British officials and residents in Ceylon (Ponnambalam Ramanathan and W. P. Ranasinha, were the only exceptions).

Elliot advocated the expansion of rice cultivation in the country - one of the few British officials to do so - as a substitute for importing this staple food item. He argued that Batticaloa rice (paddy) could be sold in Jaffna at Rs. 1.25 per bushel with its cost of production at 25 cts and transport to Jaffna at 50 cts. However, as I found during my reading of records from the time of Governor North, there had been a general prejudice against Batticaloa rice in the Jaffna peninsula. This may not have had anything to do with the Jaffna Vellalar prejudice against the growers in Batticaloa on which I have been writing earlier in these columns, but with the superior taste buds of the Jaffna people in food habits.

There was no World Bank to guide us at the end of the 19th century, as they did a century later (1996), warning Sri Lanka that she had "lost the competitive edge in the production of rice and other field crops in both major and minor irrigation schemes". WB phraseology was that the country's "self-sufficiency was purchased at high cost through investment in very capital-intensive irrigation schemes to produce a low value -added commodity; "... and "the continued focus on rice self-sufficiency inevitably constrained the performance of the agriculture sector. "It identified other crops as potential sources of growth and asserted that a shift was prevented by factors of market imperfections and state policies that directly and indirectly subsidize paddy. The World Bank also wanted to see public facilities like irrigation made cost effective and transferred to the private sector. The water tax on which a former Minister in the Kumaratunga government was hell-bent on in implementing probably came straight out of the World Bank. [Kelegama].

Many authorities have disagreed with the WB view that Sri Lanka did not have the competitive advantage in producing rice. This was so particularly in the Maha season where there was no suitable crop alternatives, one argued. It was even pointed out that the very basis of the WB prescription was false as current paddy yields in the island were comparable, if not superior, to those in South Asia and Thailand and could be even bettered if commercially grown. (Gunaratna and others). Farm size had to be increased for commercialization. This was an idea that had gained ground from Philip Gunawardena's Paddy Lands Act days.

Though the government did not accept the WB prescription its fallout could be seen in the effects it had on the government's food security programme. This was the attempt to keep rice production at around 80 per cent of domestic needs and increasing imports and consumption of wheat achieved through subsidies. Prices of both rice and wheat flour were maintained at stable levels within reach of all segments of consumers. Under the policy package, all other essential food items were also taken off the self -sufficiency scheme. To take a single example, the 'pinna mung-eta' from Nikaweratiya which formed a popular breakfast item and available at a competitive price disappeared from the Jatika -pola and the 'mudalali' was offering large -sized imported Australian green gram instead. Open economy and globalization they say to us but the E.U. could not stop France's protective agricultural policies since WW II French farmers have derailed many railway wagons bringing cheap Italian wines into France. How come? The imported agricultural products do not come cheap into our market. On the contrary, their introduction has upped the prices of local produce. The idea that the price of our products should be adjusted to international price levels does not take into account the low personal income levels in the country.

It is not my intention to discuss here the WB proposals and the alternatives suggested and the government's response to them. This has been done to some extent by reputed economists. I do not think any more writing would bring any response. No one in the government or the opposition seems to be having any time to read. As an old colleague who passed away recently told me, many cannot even read, far from understanding! Suffice it to say, that the country's food security programme has been nibbled into by various international forces, including the WB, the WTO and the OECD.

My intention is to look at the old colonial-time debate on the idea of growing rice in the island to see if we are not seeing the same colonial prescription continuing now in the form of neo-colonialism, call it "open economy' or 'globalisation' or whatever you like. One may see the same old colonial toxins dispensed in new phials!

The British civil servant, Elliot, was one of the foremost advocates on expanding irrigation facilities in the island to facilitate the expansion of rice growing. Such facilities were then confined to few areas. Batticaloa and Matara were two of them and as Elliot pointed out, these districts had benefited and increased the yield per acre. Not only was the colonial administration not favourably disposed towards renovating ancient small scale tanks, which some of the local administrators were keen to upgrade in admiration of the hapless Sinhalese peasants living in jungle villages like Morawewa, Kebetigollewa, and others for their singular attachment to their village tank which they tried to keep in good working order despite their fever-ridden, emaciated physiques, (This line of old villages from Tiriyaya to Anuradhapura on the old Buddhist track is now largely Tamilised under British and subsequent administrations but they accuse the Sinhalese of colonization-!) but these initiatives were discouraged vigorously. The colonial authorities saw no economic benefit of reviving the rice cultivation in the island. They even opened up tobacco and other crop plantations in the Trincomalee district (Mahaweli basin abandoned after caterpillar attack) and coconut in Batticaloa district using whatever Indian labour they could induce into these areas then not served by railway.