Croplife highlights agriculture sector woes at interactive event

Once renown as the granary of Asia while being recognized for superior agricultural produce and gifted with unique attributes, Sri Lanka today is experiencing major collapse in overall agricultural productivity.This has resulted in shock waves of food shortages and exorbitant price hikes leading to partial starvation among various socioeconomic strata of the country’s population. This was revealed at an interactive gathering of agri industry professionals and subject experts from the local and global arena on Friday.

Addressing the interactive gathering themed “Role of Agric Inputs in Food Security” at the Waters Edge, Battaramulla, Chairman of Croplife, Chamenda Wijerathna said that numerous economic and policy mishaps were evident during 2021-2022 period; especially the banning of essential fertilizers, pesticides and other vital agri inputs resulted in the collapse in overall agriculture productivity.

Wijerathna said that ranging from Sri Lanka’s sole-staple of rice, all crop sectors including maize, tea, upcountry and low country vegetables suffered substantial negative impacts in the aftermath of short-supplied agri inputs. A recent study revealed the magnitude of the impact where increases in the cost of production has exceeded 67 per cent while reduction of average yield has been recorded at 54 per cent.

Subsequently, the selling price of agricultural produce has increased exponentially causing various consumer segments to reduce or totally give up buying their requirements.Overall, there has been more than a 45% increase of the selling price at every level of agricultural value chains,” Wijerathna said.

He said that achievement of self sufficiency in rice since the 1990’s had been an remarkable milestone reflecting the expertise, dedication and capability of cross-sectoral stakeholders to drive the country’s agriculture in the correct path.

“This progress has been severely affected over the last year, resulting in 51 per cent yield loss, 67 per cent increase in expenditure for crop production while selling prices gained 46 per cent.”

Maize, another remarkable crop, recorded improved productivity and export potential several years back. It has taken a hard hit witnessing 59 per cent yield loss, 66 per cent increase in cost of production while selling price has risen only 47 per cent.

“Vegetables both upcountry and low country have been no exceptions in terms of the depressing impacts of wrong policy decisions. Absence of pesticides and fertilizers have resulted in yield losses in upcountry and low country vegetables at the levels of 61 per cent and 51 per cent consecutively.

“Selling price of both vegetable types touched an increase of 50 per cent. COP of low country vegetables increased by 65 per cent while the upcountry vegetables recorded a staggering 70 per cent increase of production cost.Croplife Secretary Buddhika Ekanayake said that there were deep driven impacts caused by the absence of proper agri inputs which will be hard to tackle in another season or years’ time.

He said that Croplife has recognized following areas that will pause chronic and long term threats for the food production if not dealt with cautiously and collaboratively by all stakeholders: (1) Loss of farm output prompting elevated farm gate prices causing prohibitive prices tags right from the beginning of crop value chains.

(2) Avenues being created for the entry of illegal, substandard and dangerous pesticides to reach to local agrochemical market. Numerous occurrences of smuggled pesticides from India and elsewhere were reported by farmers, consumers and environmental activists.

(3) Unaffordable input costs have largely resulted in farmers giving up cultivation paving way for a multitude of economic and social issues. Farmers protests were widely evident during recent months. Anger and frustration of the uncertainties to be contended with were freely expressed.

Croplife Treasurer, Shamal Abeysinghe, industry professionals and subject experts at local and global arena and local politicians also addressed the interactive gathering.