Connect with us

Features

GROWING COCONUTS ON ‘COCONUT LANDS’

Published

on

by Chandra Arulpragasam

In 1958 I went to a lecture on coconut cultivation, because I knew nothing of the subject. The lecturer, a well-known coconut planter, started his talk with the platitude: ‘The duty of a coconut planter is to plant coconut, on coconut land’. But this set me thinking. First, who gave him the duty to plant coconuts? From his own point of view, he should be planting the crop that would give him the greatest returns, while from the country’s point of view he should be planting the crops that would provide the greatest return in terms of income, foreign exchange, employment and sustainability. Secondly, who decided that these were ‘coconut lands’? Was this not a terminology (‘tea lands’, rubber lands’, ‘coconut lands’) inherited from the British, who grew these crops because they could be grown on a plantation-scale for export?

A couple of years later (in 1960) when I headed the agriculture sector in the Department of National Planning, and again when I came with the ILO World Employment Mission to Sri Lanka in 1974, I had an opportunity to revisit these questions. If coconut was to be a mono-crop, it was important that it should meet the above criteria of greater employment, greater income and greater foreign exchange earnings compared to other crops. Coconut brings much lower financial returns than tea or rubber. As for employment, figures of 1960 showed that while one acre of tea employed 1.1 persons per acre per year, and one acre of rubber employed 0.4 persons per acre, one acre of coconut employed only 0.1 persons per acre per year. That is, only one worker was employed for every 10 acres of coconut, which was four times less than that employed in rubber and 10 times less than that employed in tea. This meant that the so called ‘coconut lands’ were under-utilizing the land not only in terms of income but also in terms of employment.

In physical terms, assuming that the coconut trees are planted in the usual spacing of 8m x 8m apart (which is accepted by the CRI as standard) and that their root system spreads only two metres around each tree (CRI stsndard), this would still leave 78 per cent of the land untouched and unutilized – the best lands in the ‘coconut triangle’.

This brings us back to the previous question. Why should these lands be called ‘coconut lands’? Is coconut the best or only crop that can be grown on them? Undoubtedly these lands are well suited for coconut, while coconuts are much in demand by our people. Not for nothing has the coconut tree been called ‘the tree of life’. But is it wise to relegate so much of our fertile lands to a relatively low-paying mono-crop? The British probably originated the nomenclature of ‘coconut lands’ when they grew coconut as a monocrop on a plantation scale, thus making it a land-extensive and labour-extensive crop, as opposed to the land-intensive and labour-intensive crops dictated by our factor endowments. Hence, this article is not against the planting of coconut: it is only against the planting of coconut as a monocrop on lands capable of yielding much more by way of intercropping.

The system of management of ‘coconut lands’ in the period 1960-1980 speaks for itself. Whereas tea and rubber estates were managed by resident estate superintendents or managers, coconut estates were ‘looked after’ by a ‘conductor’ or by a ‘watcher’, armed only with a torch and gun. The latter showed that the focus was on preventing the theft of coconuts, rather than on increasing yields or output. This locked large extents of these ‘coconut lands’ in a cycle of low expectations, low investment, low-level management, low income and low employment.

The Coconut Research Institute (CRI) in 1974 insisted that the optimum stand of coconut was 64 trees per acre, with an adequate distance (8 metres) between the individual trees and the coconut rows. It argued, on the one hand, that the growth of the intercrop would be stunted by the shade of the coconut, while insisting on the other, that the intercrop would deprive the coconuts of needed soil nutrients. After long discussions, the CRI experts ultimately agreed to the following propositions made by me in 1974.

First, it would be technically possible to inter-plant other crops during the first five years of replanting/new planting coconut without any adverse effects, since the coconut palms would be too small to block out the sunshine from the intercrop. This in itself was a big breakthrough, since an average of 9,300 acres was replanted or newly planted to coconut each year in Sri Lanka. Since intercropping would be possible for the first five years, the total acreage available for intercropping in the newly planted/replanted acreage in any particular year would be 46,500 acres (9300 acres x 5 years).

From this total should be deducted the 22 per cent of land that is actually occupied by the newly planted coconut, which would leave a net acreage of 36,000 acres for planting other crops. For purposes of comparison, this annually available acreage is more than double the extent of land opened up under land development/colonization schemes in each year, prior to the Mahaweli Scheme.

Secondly, the CRI ultimately agreed that in older stands of coconut (more than 25 years old), the trees would have grown so tall that they would not block out the sun from an inter-planted crop. It further now agrees that intercropping is possible without detriment to the coconut or its yields for 35 years of the trees’ 55 years of productive life. It is a pity that it has taken about 30 years for technical thinking to reach this conclusion!

But, thirdly, it was necessary to push the thinking even further. I argued that wider spacing between the coconut rows would result in less shade between the rows, thus enabling intercropping. The CRI in 1974 initially objected to this on the grounds that it would reduce the total number of trees per acre. But they ultimately agreed to my suggestion that if we increased the space between the rows but planted closer along the rows, the number of 64 trees per acre could still be attained, without any decrease in total production. Such further-apart spacing of coconut rows is now (40 years later) actually practised in Kerala and the Philippines, combined with intercropping. However, in Sri Lanka, although this was technically accepted in 1974, there has been little action along these lines by the Coconut Development Authority.

There remained the question of what could be grown as an inter-crop. When I travelled for FAO in Asia in the 1970s, I found pineapple, bananas, sisal, maize and manioc already inter-planted with coconut in the Philippines, and even cocoa under coconut in Indonesia, while livestock was common in most countries. Thus Sri Lanka lagged behind other South East Asian countries in this regard not only in the 1970s, but even so today.

Despite the government’s neglect, private planters in Sri Lanka have recently been adopting intercropping at an increasing pace. According to a survey done by the Coconut Research Institute in 2006, cashew was the most popular intercrop in the Dry Zone, while pineapple, betel and pepper were most popular in the Intermediate Zone. Tea, cinnamon and ginger were most popular in the Wet Zone, while bananas and livestock were common in all regions. Agro-forestry using tree crops (such as glyricidia) has also been recently recommended as a means of providing fodder for livestock, wood for fuel, biomass for fertilizer, control of erosion and soil moisture retention.

Obviously the possibilities of intercropping would be more limited in drier parts of the country with poorer soils. The inter-planting of cashew trees (pruned low) between the rows of coconut has now been adopted in the drier areas. I had also suggested (in the Short Term Implementation Programme of 1961) that groundwater was likely to be available at fairly shallow levels in the coastal areas north of Puttalam, which could be pumped up for higher value crops. I had also suggested the possibility of using windmills for such irrigation, which could be powered by the steady winds that blow during the dry season in these areas.

In 1994, I was able to revisit this question of inter-cropping under coconut in the drier areas. A women’s micro-credit in the dry north of the Puttalam District had used its loan to purchase a pump to irrigate an inter-crop on land newly planted to coconut. The women found groundwater at a depth of only four feet, which they pumped to irrigate chillie plants cultivated between the newly planted coconut rows. Their net return was Rs. 30,000 per acre within a four month period in 1994, which was more than treble the return from the adjoining coconut land for the whole year. Meanwhile, the fertilizer and water that they used for the intercrop were found to benefit the newly planted coconut too, in a win-win synergy. In the long run, the possibility of drip irrigation for coconut needs also to be considered. Such irrigation is needed only at the height of the dry season (cheap systems are now available) in order to reduce stress and increase yields.

To sum up, the Coconut Research Institute has now agreed to the following propositions that I proposed in 1961 and reiterated in 1974 (ref. ILO World Employment Mission, 1974).

· Inter-cropping between newly planted or replanted coconut can be done without prejudice to the newly planted coconut palms for the first five to six years of their life.

· In new plantings, the coconut rows could be planted farther apart, but with more trees per row, such that the total number of trees per acre will not be reduced. This would enable an inter-cop between the rows.

· Inter-planting among older coconut stands of over 25 years can be undertaken without detriment to the coconut trees or to the intercrop.

· Such intercropping can be done even in the drier regions using intercrops suited to the drier conditions, while irrigation would provide an added bonus.

· The yields of coconut actually increase because of the fertilizer and water used in the intercrop.

· There are other advantages of intercropping, such as providing biomass for fertilizer, increasing soil moisture and reducing erosion.

· The inter-crop (depending on the crop) is capable of yielding more than double the value of all the coconuts that could be produced from the same land.

Despite intercropping being both feasible and profitable, it was reported as late as 2007 that ‘in Sri Lanka, most of the coconut holdings are maintained as monocultures’ (Gunathilake, 2007). The question is why intercropping has not been more widely adopted when its feasibility and desirability were highlighted as early as 1974. The answers, in the opinion of the writer, are mainly structural and institutional.

The advantages of intercropping arise from its more intensive use of land and labour, with resultant higher returns per acre. However, the pattern of absentee ownership and management of larger estates raises the problem of supervising the casual, non-resident labourers needed for intercropping. Faced with this question, one of my estate-owner friends exploded: ‘Are you mad? The fellows (the labourers) will steal my coconuts’! Thus, although intercropping is recognized as feasible and profitable, the prevailing agrarian structure (with large holdings and absentee landlords not prepared to accept outside labour) seems to be the major factor inhibiting the wider adoption of inter-cropping on larger estates. Such estates (over 20 acres) occupied 18 per cent of the total area under coconut in 2002 (Agricultural Census of 2002).

Coconut, however, is mainly a smallholder crop in Sri Lanka, with 80 per cent of all ‘coconut lands’, covering almost 800,000 acres being made up of small holdings; 54 per cent of these are less than three acres in extent. Inter-cropping is gaining ground in this area, using mainly family labour. Although figures of comparative coconut yields between large and small coconut farms are not available for Sri Lanka, it is very likely that the coconut yields are higher in these small holdings compared to larger holdings, as proved in other countries. More importantly, the total value of agricultural production per acre in such small holdings is likely to be much higher than that in the large, well-managed coconut estates.

This is because the coconut smallholder invests more labour per unit of land to intensify and diversify his production by intercropping, in order to maximize his income. Most small coconut holdings are likely to include a papaya, banana or lime tree, some betel or pepper vines, some home-grown vegetables and some livestock. In fact, the small holder actually attains this higher level of total productivity per acre only by treating his land as much more than a ‘coconut land’.

Fortunately in more recent times, individual coconut planters in Sri Lanka have started to inter-crop on their own initiative, with encouraging results. The Coconut Research Institute has also helped by useful research into types of crops and land practices for intercropping. There has also been more forward-looking research and development abroad, in terms of ‘coconut based farming systems’ (CBFS) – a concept which is gaining ground in South India (Kerala) and some other South East Asian countries.

The purpose should not be merely to increase coconut yields, but to maximize the total productivity of these lands on a sustainable basis. This can best be achieved by a more holistic approach which seeks to develop the farming system as a whole, with each component synergistically supporting the other. While coconut would provide the pillars of such a farming system, inter-cropping would enhance its total productivity and ecological sustainability. Since coconut would still be the foundation of such a system, perhaps we could even be forgiven for referring to these lands affectionately as ‘coconut lands’!

(The writer who was a member 0f the old Ceylon Civil Service thereafter had a long career with FAO)



Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Features

USAID and NGOS under siege

Published

on

A file photo of the USAID signage being removed in Washington

by Jehan Perera

The virtually overnight  suspension of the U.S. government’s multibillion dollar foreign aid programme channeled through USAID has been headline news in the U.S. and in other parts of the world where this aid has been very important.  In the U.S. itself the suspension of USAID programmes has been accompanied by large scale loss of jobs in the aid sector without due notice.  In areas of the world where U.S. aid was playing an important role, such as in mitigating conditions of famine or war, the impact is life threatening to large numbers of hapless people.  In Sri Lanka, however, the suspension of U.S. aid has made the headlines for an entirely different reason.

U.S. government authorities have been asserting that the reason for the suspension of the foreign aid programme is due to various reasons, including inefficiency and misuse that goes against the present government’s policy and is not in the U.S. national interest.  This has enabled politicians in Sri Lanka who played leading roles in previous governments, but are now under investigation for misdeeds associated with their periods of governance, to divert attention from themselves.  These former leaders of government are alleging that they were forced out of office prematurely due to the machination of NGOs that had been funded by USAID and not because of the misgovernance and corruption they were accused of.

 In the early months of 2022, hundreds of thousands of people poured out onto the streets of Sri Lanka in  all parts of the country demanding the exit of the then government.  The Aragalaya protests became an unstoppable movement due the unprecedented economic hardships that the general population was being subjected to at that time.  The protestors believed that those in the government had stolen the country’s wealth.  The onset of economic bankruptcy meant that the government did not have foreign exchange (dollars) to pay for essential imports, including fuel, food and medicine.  People died of exhaustion after waiting hours and even days in queues for petrol and in hospitals due to lack of medicine.

PROBING NGOS 

There have been demands by some of the former government leaders who are currently under investigation that USAID funding to Sri Lanka should be probed.  The new NPP government has responded to this demand by delegating the task to the government’s National NGO Secretariat.  This is the state institution that is tasked with collecting information from the NGOs registered with it about their quantum and sources of funding and what they do with it for the betterment of the people.  Public Security Minister Ananda Wijepala has said he would deal with allegations over USAID funding in Sri Lanka, and for that he had sought a report from the NGO Secretariat which is operating under his Ministry.

 Most donor agencies operating in Sri Lanka, including USAID, have rigorous processes which they follow in disbursing funds to NGOs.   Usually, the donor agency will issue a call for proposals which specify their areas of interest.  NGOs have to compete to obtain these funds, stating what they will do with it in considerable detail, and the impact it will have.  Once the grant is awarded, the NGOs are required to submit regular reports of work they have done.  The donor agencies generally insist that reputed audit firms, preferably with international reputations, perform regular annual or even six-monthly audits of funds provided.  They may even send independent external monitors to evaluate the impact of the projects they have supported.

 The value of work done by NGOs is that they often take on unpopular and difficult tasks that do not have mass appeal but are essential for a more just and inclusive society.  Mahatma Gandhi who started the Sarvodaya (meaning, the wellbeing of all) Movement in India was inspired by the English philosopher John Ruskin who wrote in 1860 that a good society was one that would care for the very last member in it.   The ideal that many NGOs strive for, whether in child care, sanitation, economic  development or peacebuilding is that everyone is included and no one is excluded from society’s protection, in which the government necessarily plays a lead role.

 SELF-INTEREST

 Ironically, those who now demand that USAID funds and those organisations that obtained such funds be investigated were themselves in government when USAID was providing such funds.  The National NGO Secretariat was in existence doing its work  of monitoring the activities of NGOs then.  Donor agencies, such as USAID, have stringent policies that prevent funds they provide being used for partisan political purposes.  This accounts for the fact that when NGOs invite politicians to attend their events, they make it a point to invite those from both the government and opposition, so that their work is not seen as being narrowly politically partisan.

 The present situation is a very difficult one for NGOs in Sri Lanka and worldwide.  USAID was the biggest donor agency by far, and the sudden suspension of its funds has meant that many NGOs have had to retrench staff, stop much of their work and some have even closed down.  It appears that the international world order is becoming more openly based on self-interest, where national interests take precedence over global interests, and the interests of the wealthy segments of society take precedence over the interests of the people in general.  This is not a healthy situation for human beings or for civilisation as the founders of the world religions knew with their consistent message that the interests of others, of the neighbour, of all living beings be prioritised.

 In 1968, when the liberal ideas of universal rights were more dominant in the international system, Garrett Hardin, an evolutionary biologist, wrote a paper called “The Tragedy of the Commons”.  Hardin used an example of sheep grazing land when describing the adverse effects of overpopulation. He referred to a situation where individuals, acting in their own self-interest, overexploit a shared resource, like a pasture or fishery, leading to its depletion and eventual destruction, even though it is detrimental to everyone in the long run; essentially, the freedom to use a common resource without regulation can lead to its ruin for all users.   The world appears to be heading in that direction.  In these circumstances, the work of  those, who seek the wellbeing of all, needs to be strengthened and not undermined.

Continue Reading

Features

Dealing with sexual-and gender-based violence in universities

Published

on

Out of the Shadows:

By Nicola Perera

Despite policy interventions at the University Grants Commission (UGC), university, and faculty levels, sexual- and gender-based violence (SGBV) is so entrenched in the system that victim-survivors seeking justice are more likely to experience concerted pushback than the empathetic solidarity of their peers. Colleagues and friends will often close ranks, rallying to protect the accused under misguided notions of safeguarding the reputation of, not merely the assumed perpetrator, but the institution. While gender and sexual inequalities, inflected by class, ethnicity, religion, region, and other characteristics, shape the identities of the perpetrator and victim and the situation of abuse, the hyper-hierarchised nature of the university space itself enables and conceals such violence. It’s also important to note that women are not the exclusive victims of violence; boys and men are caught in violent dynamics, too.

Similar to intimate partner violence in the private confines of home and family, violence attributed to the sex and gender of abusers and victims in our universities goes heavily underreported. The numerous power imbalances structuring the university – between staff and students; academic staff versus non-academic staff; senior academic professionals as opposed to junior academics; or, senior students in contrast to younger students – also prevent survivors from seeking redress for fear of professional and personal repercussions. Research by the UGC in 2015 in collaboration with the Federation of University Teachers’ Associations (FUTA) and CARE International Sri Lanka, and more recently with UNICEF in 2021, revealed discomfiting truths about the university as places of work and education. In naming oneself as a survivor-victim, even within whatever degree of confidentiality that current grievance mechanisms offer, the individual may also represent (to some members of the university community, if not to the establishment itself) a threat to the system.

Conversely, an accused is liable to not just disciplinary action by their university-employer, but to criminal prosecution by the state. Via the Penal Code, the Prevention of Domestic Violence Act (2005), etc., the law recognises SGBV as an offence that can take place across many contexts in the private and public spheres. (The criminalisation of SGBV is in line with state commitments to ensuring the existence, safety, and dignity of women and girls under a host of international agreements, such as the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, Vienna Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women, the Sustainable Development Goals, International Labour Organisation conventions regarding non-discrimination in employment, etc.). Specific to the university, the so-called anti-ragging act (the Prohibition of Ragging and Other Forms of Violence in Education Institutes Act of 1998, in addition to UGC circular no. 919 of 2010, etc.) deems SGBV as a punishable offence. The rag is one site where SGBV often finds fluent articulation, but it is hardly the only one: this is not a problem with just our students.

As the apex body governing higher education in the country, the UGC has not remained insensible to the fact that SGBV harms the lives, rights, and work of students, staff, (and other parties) in university spaces. The Centre for Gender Equity/Equality sits at the UGC level, along with gender cells/committees in individual universities. Universities and faculties have elaborated their own policies and bylaws to address sexual- or gender-based harassment and sexual violence. Although variously articulated, these policies touch on issues of consent; discrimination against a person, or creation of a hostile environment, on the basis of their gender or sexuality; the spectrum of actions that may constitute harassment/violence (including through the use of technology); coerced or voluntary sexual favours as a quid-pro-quo for academic or professional benefits; procedures for making and investigating SGBV complaints; protection of witnesses to an investigation; the irrelevance of the complainant’s sexual history to the complaint at hand. And here begins the inevitable tale of distance between policy, practice, and effect.

Different faculties of the same university may or may not include SGBV awareness/ training in the annual orientation for new students. The faculty’s SGBV policy may or may not appear in all three languages and Braille in student handbooks. Staff Development Centres training new recruits in outcome-based education and intended learning outcomes may or may not look at (or even realise) the politics of education, nor include an SGBV component in its Human Resources modules. Universities may or may not dedicate increasingly stretched resources to training workshops on SGBV for staff, or cover everyone from academics, to administrative staff, to the marshals, to maintenance staff, to hostel wardens.

Workshops may in any case only draw a core of participants, mostly young, mostly women. Instead, groups of male academics (aided sometimes by women colleagues) will actively organise against any gender policy which they construe as a personal affront to their professional stature. Instead, the outspoken women academic is painted as a troublemaker. Existing policy fails to address such discourse, and other normalised microaggressions and subtle harassment which create a difficult environment for gender and sexual minorities. In fact, the implementation of gender policy at all may rest on the critical presence of an individual (inevitably a woman) in a position of power. Gender equality in the university at any point appears to rest on the convictions and labour of a handful of (mostly women) staff or officials.

The effect is the tediously heteropatriarchal spaces that staff and students inhabit, spaces which whether we acknowledge them as such or not, are imbued with the potential, the threat of violence for those on the margins. The effect, as Ramya Kumar writing earlier in this column states, is the inability of our LGBTQI students and staff to be their authentic selves, except to a few confidantes. Since the absence/rarity of SGBV complaints is no evidence that the phenomenon does not exist, perhaps a truer indication of how gender-sensitised our institutions and personnel are, comes back again to the reception of such complaints. Thus, a woman accuser is frequently portrayed as the archetypal scorned woman: abuse is rewritten not just as consent, but a premeditated transaction of sexual relations in exchange for better grades, a secured promotion, and so on. A situation of abuse becomes inscribed as one of seduction, where the accuser basically changes their tune and cries harassment or rape when the expected gains fail to materialise. Especially with the global backlash to MeToo, society is preoccupied with the ‘false accusation,’ even though there is plenty of evidence that few incidents of SGBV are reported, and fewer still are successfully prosecuted. These misogynist tropes of women and women’s sexuality matter in relation to SGBV in university, because Faculty Boards, investigative committees, Senates, and Councils will be as equally susceptible to them as any citizen or juror in a court of law. They matter in placing the burden of documenting abuse/harassment as it takes place on the victim-survivor, to accumulate evidence that will pass muster before a ‘neutral,’ ‘objective’ observer.

At the end of the day, when appointments to gender committees may be handpicked to not rock the boat, or any university Council may dismiss a proven case of SGBV on a technicality, the strongest policies, the most robust mechanisms and procedures are rendered ineffective, unless those who hold power in everyday dealings with students and persons in subordinate positions at the university also change.

(Nicola Perera teaches English as a second language at the University of Colombo.)

Kuppi is a politics and pedagogy happening on the margins of the lecture hall that parodies, subverts, and simultaneously reaffirms social hierarchies.

Continue Reading

Features

4th Feb. celebrations…with Mirage in the scene

Published

on

Mirage: Singing the National Anthem…in the Seychelles (L) / A proud moment for Mirage (R)

There were celebrations everywhere, connected with our 77th Independence Day, and in the Seychelles, too, it was a special happening.

Perhaps, it was also the very first occasion where the group Mirage found themselves in the spotlight, at an Independence Day event, and singing the National Anthem, as well.

It all happened on Tuesday, 4th February, in Silhouette Island, in the Seychelles.

Sri Lankans, plus the locals, joined in the celebrations, which included the hoisting of the National Flag, by the General Manager of the Hilton Seychelles Labriz Resort & Spa, Marc Schumacher, the singing of the National Anthem, and the usual Sri Lankan delicacies, connected with such special occasions.

The National Anthem, led by Mirage, was sung with enthusiasm, and pride, by the crowd present, waving the National Flag.

Hoisting of the National Flag (L) / General Manager of the Hilton Seychelles Labriz Resort & Spa (R)

Mirage also did the Valentine’s Day scene, on 14th February, at the Labriz Lounge.

The group has turned out to be a favourite with the folks in the Seychelles. and the management at the Lo Brizan restaurant and pub, where the group performs six nights a week, is keen for the band to return, in December, for another stint at Lo Brizan.

This is the group’s second visit to the Seychelles and they are now due home on the 19th of this month.

They have already got a big assignment on the cards, in Colombo, where they would be seen in action at ‘Legends of Ceylon,’ scheduled for 19th March, doing the needful for some of the legends in the local music scene – Joey Lewis, Dalrene, Manilal, Gefforey Fernando, Mignonne and Sohan.

Continue Reading

Trending