I followed the philosopher Lao Tzu’s advice by taking to a life of farming and rural living in the dry zone forty years ago. However, I must hasten to admit that our decision to engage in farming was more out of self- interest than altruism. My wife and I took to farming because we loved agriculture, rural life, and living close to nature in the countryside. This was no mere week- end picnic; nor was it an academic exercise in participant observation initiated and sustained by external donor funding. Farming was our livelihood – a serious attempt at supporting a family of four on the produce and income derived by cultivating a two-hectare plot of land at Soraborawewa, in Mahiyangana. One may call it an experiment in farming and rural living (sans tax rebates!).

Science and Practice

Fresh from University endowed with a Masters’ degree in agriculture, and having acquired post graduate experience in rice research and production at the prestigious International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines, I was over confident in becoming a successful rice farmer. Our paddy/rice farm consisted of two blocks – one block was located in a sandy tract appropriately called ‘welipethiyaya’ by local farmers, while the other was a typical ‘paddy soil’ with a high clay content. The standard practice in land preparation involves shaving the bunds (niyara) of all weed growth, and ploughing the weeds into the soil. However, we noticed that local farmers did not plough in weeds in the ‘welipethiyaya’ fields. They would instead burn the weeds growing on the ‘bunds’ (niyara), prior to ploughing their paddy fields. This did not seem to make sense to us because science teaches us that sandy soils benefit most from organic matter. " That is all good in theory. If you bury the weeds in welipethiyaya, your rice plants will not survive beyond 4-6 weeks", claimed the peasant farmers. We refused to heed their advice and persisted in ploughing in the weeds. One month after sowing, we learnt a bitter lesson. The rice plants began to die in patches as predicted by local farmers. On closer observation, we noticed that bubbles of gas were released from the submerged soil as we walked through the affected fields. Pulling out a few dying plants, we noticed that their roots were grayish black in colour (unlike the brown colour of healthy rice roots). A distinct smell of hydrogen sulphide was observed. Our rice plants were dying as a result of root rot caused by an accumulation of toxic organic compounds and hydrogen sulphide gas in the soil. Disaster stared us in the face! What do we do now? "You can save at least some of your rice plants if you drain your fields of all the water, and let the soil dry out. Thereafter, you will have to resort to alternate wetting and drying of the fields until maturity and harvest", advised our farmer friends. We listened to them this time. Sure enough, their prescription worked. That was our first lesson in humility and the wisdom of indigenous knowledge.

Respect

We operated this small farm for a period of ten years (1969-78). These ten years proved to be an invaluable learning experience. We soon realized that a University degree in agriculture did not equip us adequately to make a success of dry zone farming. Our ability to survive the hazards of dry zone agriculture, and make a reasonable success of farming, was largely due to what we learnt from our fellow farmers – peasants practicing traditional farming techniques. Their indigenous knowledge acquired through generations of experience, had enabled them to carefully craft sustainable farming systems that would provide their needs and effectively address the many hazards of dry zone agriculture – the constant threat of drought – monsoon rains that could provide more than 200mm of rainfall within a few hours – marauding herds of wild boar and elephant that would destroy an entire season’s harvest in just one night should the farmers relax their vigil.

We also learnt from these simple village folk the importance of humility, patience, tolerance, hope, faith, courage, endurance, love, sympathy, sharing and survival with dignity. No university could teach us these values!

We experienced and witnessed the impact of unfavorable government policy, marketing bottlenecks, corruption and stifling influence of the bureaucracy, mismatch between farmer needs and extension ‘messages’, research agendas that appeared to have little relevance to solving pressing farmer problems; service providers who failed to deliver, exploitation by middlemen traders and rural elites, breakdown of rural institutions, dis-empowerment and pauperization of farming communities.

A genuine respect and empathy for the peasant farmers of the dry zone and their way of life was the natural outcome of this experience.

The ‘open economic policies’ of a new government in 1977 proved to be the death knell of our little farm. Unable to compete with a flood of cheap imported commodities, we were compelled to close down the farm in 1979 and seek alternative employment.

Nevertheless, that experience in farming and grass root level living virtually transformed our life. It left an indelible impression and a firm resolve to champion the cause of the many small farmers in the dry zone – unsung heroes and heroines - who toil from dawn to dusk, through monsoon rain and burning sun, to help feed this nation despite earning a bare pittance for themselves in the process.

I spent the next twenty five years in a variety of occupations – researcher in the department of agriculture; ‘training officer’ (sans trainees!) in the Mahaweli Development Board; agricultural consultant to several NGOs and INGOs; integrated rural development projects funded by IFAD and the World Bank as well as bilateral assistance programmes funded by the Dutch and Swedish governments in Sri Lanka. Agricultural development, aimed at increasing domestic food production, and poverty alleviation were ostensibly the central theme addressed by all these programmes and projects. Sadly, many of them were poorly focussed, badly implemented, and some times completely off target.