by Rajan Philips

There is an abundance of historical data available on the extent of land cultivation and the amount of paddy harvested based on well-established yields per unit area. Separate sets of statistics cover the Maha and the Yala seasons. The amount of rice produced is estimated to be about two thirds of cultivated paddy by weight. Paddy cultivation as well as rice production and consumption statistics are also available in an impressively disaggregate format, including sectoral (urban, rural, estate), provincial and district distributions. The data also includes expenditure on rice consumption as a proportion of household income on the same disaggregate basis.

However, there appears to be no matching data on the amount of rice sold and bought whether wholesale or retail, either at the national level or at the sectoral and spatial levels. This is a critical data gap that would help those who manipulate the supply of rice and handicap those who try to enable the even distribution of rice in the retail market throughout the year. It is my purpose to elaborate on this to provoke some discussion, if not action.

Impressive Production Data

According to the Department of Census and Statistics data base, Sri Lanka maintains an island wide enumeration system for each parcel of land where paddy is cultivated. Data is collected for each season based on information provided by Agricultural Research and Production Assistants and Grama Niladari acting as “primary reporters.” In addition, the “average yield of paddy” is estimated at the district level using a sample survey known as “the crop cutting survey” that currently includes 4,000 “paddy tracts” for each of the two paddy growing seasons. The enumeration and the sample survey processes have been in place from 1951. This is quite impressive considering the slacking and sliding in so many areas of government due to political monkeying.

Based on the 2023 paddy statistics that I referenced last week, 4.5M metric tons of paddy was produced for the year from a total cultivation area of 1.16M hectares at an average yield of 3870 kg/ha. Seasonally, 2.7M metric tons (60%) were produced from 722,500 (62%) hectares at 3737 kg/ha in the Maha season; and 1.8M metric tons (40%) were produced from 440,300 hectares (38%) at 4,088 kg/ha in the Yala season.

Converting paddy to rice, 4.5M metric tons of paddy was milled into 3.0M metric tons of rice to meet the annual rice demand of 2.5M metric tons based on an annual average per capita consumption of 115 kg of rice. We can ignore the rounding off statistics for 2023, such as imports, stock change and exports, on the supply side, and the amount of seed paddy, processed paddy and waste, on the demand side. For 2023, some 29,000 metric tons of rice was imported, and 8,000 metric tons of rice was exported. The import volume would be much higher in a year of low paddy production due to weather effects.

For a typical year, over 90% of imported rice is from India, and Sri Lanka is identified as one of the major importers of rice from Tamil Nadu whose non-basmati rice exports account for 10% of all rice exports from India. More than 60% Sri Lankan rice exports are destined to western countries with not insignificant Sri Lankan diaspora populations. On the export side, the Sri Lankan short-grain rice is not considered to be export-attractive. However, given the plethora of rice varieties in Sri Lanka, it is not known if there have been strong efforts to find niche markets for some of the island’s historic and unique rice varieties.

Year Round Distribution

The generally available paddy/rice production statistics provide data for total rice production only but for the commonly marketed Nadu, Red, Samba, Keeri Samba rice varieties. But such data appears to available at the official level. In the recent controversy over the (hilariously, allegedly Wickremesinghe-induced) shortage of Red rice, Minister of Trade, Commerce, Food Security and Cooperative Development Wasantha Samarasinghe provided production data for Red rice for the year 2024. The Minister’s point was that there should not have been Red rice shortage given the 2023/24 Maha season cultivation of 706,000 metric tons of paddy from 277,000 hectares and the 2024 cultivation of 403,097 metric tons (the area of cultivation was not indicated). The Minister also noted that the Red rice growing paddy fields are more in the southern and eastern districts.

In proportion to the 2023 total rice production figures, the Red rice portion would be 26% for the Maha season and 22% for the Yala season. The area of cultivation for Red rice is 38% of the total cultivation area for the Maha season, which would indicate a lower yield rate for Red rice than the average yield. My point in this is that it would be helpful for the Department of Census and Statistics (DCS) in include in its commonly available paddy/rice statistics the cultivation and production figures for the different rice types in the market. DCS already provides data for the weekly changes in the prices of the different rice types, and it would be helpful to have their production data also available to the public.

Similarly, the district-wise breakdown of paddy statistics provides the total rice production data for each district, but not for different rice types cultivated in different districts. For total paddy production in the 2023/24 Maha season, nine of the 24 districts (Hambantota, Mannar Batticaloa, Ampara, Trincomalee, Kurunegala, Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa and Monaragala) produced more than 100,000 metric tons, three of which (Ampara, Kurunegala, and Polonnaruwa) exceeded 200,000 metric tons, and Anuradhapura registered the biggest harvest exceeding 450,000 metric tons.

In the 2024 Yala season, seven of the 24 districts (Hambantota, Batticaloa, Ampara, Trincomalee, Kurunegala, Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa) produced more than 100,000 metric tons, during the Yala season with four of them (Ampara, Kurunegala, Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa) exceeding 200,000 metric tons. The noted nine districts are also the rice-surplus districts which in theory should be able to meet their own consumption demands. The other fifteen districts which are generally the more populous districts are invariably the rice-deficit districts and have to depend on rice transported from the surplus districts to meet their higher demands.

Paucity of Marketing Data

As I noted at the outset, in comparison to the relatively rich paddy production statistics there is no matching data for the amounts of paddy or rice that are transacted in the wholesale and retail markets. The absence of marketing data is referenced in the academic and research writings on Sri Lanka’s rice milling industry, and these studies generally base themselves on available but inadequate surveys of existing rice mills.

It would seem that there is no reckonable information on the rice milling sector itself. There are apparently over 7,000 mills in the country, which widely range from small to medium, large and very large in their size and capacity. Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa districts reportedly include the highest number of rice mills as well as the largest among them.

In terms of their physical make up and production capacity, the big Sri Lankan rice mills rival the mills in rice exporting Asian countries. The well known Silos Spain mill building company boasts on its website of the rice milling plants it has built in Sri Lanka for Lakbima Rice Mills. The emerging Hongjia Grain Machinery Company of China carries on its website a “Rice Mill Industry Analysis” for Sri Lanka and offers itself as a worthy resource for supplying machinery and building new rice mills in Sri Lanka. I am of course unaware if any of the large rice mills in Sri Lanka have been built by Hongjia Company.

There are two points to be made here. First, Sri Lanka’s rice milling industry has grown and expanded to a stage that makes the old storage silos put up by the Paddy Marketing Board look pathetic and primitive. There is no point in going back to stone age in rice milling and storage. Nor is there any point in getting Chinese or Indian assistance for the Paddy Marketing Board to build competing state owned rice mills in the country. If there is a need for additional rice mills let the private capital look after it and find more fruitful opportunities for investing scarce public funds.

Second, as others have pointed out, the Paddy Market Board rather than getting back in the business of collecting and storing paddy, could and should be used to exercise at least some its extensive (but long dormant) regulatory powers over the rice milling industry. The PMB has the power to license and refuse licenses to rice milling operations. I have no information as to whether the operating rice mills are licensed by the PMB. The PMB website does not seem to carry any licensing information the way the Public Utilities Commission (PUCSL) provides information on its licence holders in the energy industry.

Pertinent to marketing data, the PMB has the power (under Section 13 of its enabling legislation) “to carry out investigations and record data concerning production, sale, supply, storage, purchase, distribution, hulling, milling or processing of paddy and rice.” There is no reason why the PMB has not been doing this over the years and why it cannot be directed to do so now by the NPP government.

To add a note of caution, the exercise of this regulatory power should not be to harass individual farmers and smallholders who mill their own produce to make ends meet, but to get marketing information from the large millers who control a substantial portion of the paddy purchase and rice supply.

Lastly, a comment on parliament’s role in this. The lack of marketing statistics for rice is evident in the public discussion on rice shortages. However, this data gap does not seem to bother parliamentarians whenever they raise questions about rice and ministers do not provide answers that are informed by helpful statistics. That should not be surprising given the decline and fall of parliamentary expertise under the weight of the equally ill informed executive presidency.

Old parliamentarians like CP de Silva, Philip Gunawardena, Dudley Snananayke and Dr SA Wickremesinghe were acknowledged rice experts. Writing in a Daily News supplement to mark the occasion of the closure of the old parliament and its relocation to Kotte from Colombo, Pieter Keuneman recalled an impromptu three-way discussion, between Dudley Senanayake, CP de Silva and SA Wickremesinghe, on irrigation and paddy cultivation as one of the finest hours of the Beira Lake parliament.

Parliamentarians of the Left, in spite of their revolutionary generalizations, were also nerdy sticklers for detail. Once NM Perera berated Finance Minister Felix Dias for increasing the wholesale price of a gallon of arrack by an amount not divisible by six, because arrack taverns were going to reap rounding off profit from the retail price of a bottle of arrack.

I am nostalgically recalling all this in the hope that the current parliament, the most Left in our history, will once again become an institution that keeps itself well informed for its deliberations and decisions. None more so than in the area of paddy and rice in general, and their marketing in particular. And never more than now when the Left is in government and not in opposition.

by Rohan Wijesinha

It is mooted on social media that the hierarchy of the Department of Wildlife Conservation (DWC) has determined that to rid themselves of the headache of Human-Elephant Conflict (HEC), they will drive all wild elephants into the confines of National Parks and imprison them there, with no consideration of it exceeding the carrying capacity of the parks. At present, this seems just rumour and conjecture but the recent actions of the DWC certainly give credence to the suggestion.

If there is truth to the rumour, then the total population of the wild elephant has to be reduced from the present number to less than 2,000 for the National Parks to be able to sustain captive herds and, even then, for a very short time. As per the official census of 2011, there were approximately 6,000 wild elephants in Sri Lanka. A politician recently suggested the figure of 7,000 (and the just completed census will inevitably support this), though it is uncertain as to what scientific knowledge this claim was based on. In which case, approximately 5,000 elephants need to be obliterated.

There are two obvious ways of accomplishing this:

· Kill 5,000 wild elephants.

· Drive them into National Parks and contain them there; to starve to death.

Both methodologies will result in the planned massacre of thousands of elephants – one quick and messy, and the second through the protracted starvation and suffering of these creatures. Is this consistent with the supposed religious ideology and culture of this Nation?

As per official figures, since 2010 to date, approximately 4,250 elephants have perished. If the 2011 census is close to correct, then the remaining number should be less than 2,000. Yet, claims are being made for over three times that number. It takes 22 months for an elephant calf to be born. The female will then not come into estrous for another two to three years until her calf is weaned. Despite all of this, if the number has grown by this much, then nothing short of a biological miracle has taken place; unless the 2011 census was woefully incorrect. If that is so, then the recent census undertaken using the same methodology is hardly likely to be accurate as well.

Returning to a Failed System

The DWC has previously stated that driving elephants does not work. This is for a variety of reasons, the foremost being that HEC is mainly caused by male elephants. However, when there is a ‘drive’, all elephants in the area are driven away; mainly females and their calves. Many of the males, by now used to thunder flashes and noise, remain hidden. Even when driven away, they often return in search of their home ranges; deafened by elephant bombs and even blinded by rubber bullets, they are now much more aggressive and resentful of people.

The females and calves remain where they have been driven to; traumatized and often injured, many perish, often from starvation. This tragically happened when elephants were driven into the Lunugamvehera National Park during the Walawe Left Bank Development Project. In addition to elephants perishing as a result of this drive, a survey undertaken by the Center for Conservation and Research (CCR) found that three months after the drive, 71% of the farmers said that HEC intensity was the same or worse than before the drive. The drive was detrimental to elephant conservation and neither did it help the farmers. This begs the question, why does DWC conduct elephant drives?

A National Park can host a finite number of elephants. This number varies according to the amount of fodder available for them in it. If this number is exceeded, then these highly intelligent animals will attempt to leave the confines of the Park, or die. This is why even now, elephants range from one area to another, to permit the foliage in the previous place to replenish itself. In the Uda Walawe National Park, researchers have found that the elephant population has decreased by 50% in the last 10 years. This is due to bad habitat management resulting in the loss of grasslands. The rest have either died or moved to other areas. Inevitably, HEC has increased. In the Yala National Park, thanks to fencing the elephants in, over 50% of the calves die within two years due to malnutrition. There are indications that calves are dying in the Lunugamvehera NP too due to poor habitat quality. This is a portent of things to come if these drives continue.

What elephants and informed science are aware of, the National custodians of these magnificent animals choose to ignore. The DWC, with political patronage, is in the process of driving approximately 150 elephants from the Sharvatipura area, near Anuradhapura, to the Wilpattu National Park; a sanctuary for wildlife but NOT for a large number of elephants. Grass is the major food source of elephants and lacking large open grasslands, it rarely attracts any herds of any size into its interior. Its beautiful forests lack the varieties preferred by elephants, and their height and stature, make whatever there inaccessible to them. In addition, in their desperate attempts to find something to eat, elephants could change the habitat of the Park with serious consequences to all of the other of its wondrous inhabitants. Imagine those beautiful forests turning into scrubland. It could happen.

Sacrificial Lambs

At present, these 150 sacrifices to knee-jerk political requirement are stranded in the Oya Maduwa NLDB Farm awaiting what else the DWC has in store for them. For, predictably, the drive is not quite going to plan. Ill thought out schemes rarely do e.g. who would drive elephants during the cultivation season through cultivation to where they are to go? Why doesn’t the DWC tell the politicians what they need to know rather than what they would like to hear?

Some 44% of the land mass of Sri Lanka is shared by humans and elephants. This is not new. In previous times it was much more. Those ancient communities knew how to live with elephants and other wild animals as their neighbours. Since Independence, with the increase in development, communities from other areas were relocated to these places and were largely unaware of how to deal with their wild neighbours. Soon coexistence turned to conflict with, inevitably, the stronger being the overall victor.

Yet today, nothing has been learned; or is it that much has been learned but not corrected? In fact, history will be harsh on this country’s statutory guardians of its wilderness and wildlife.

Saving human lives and livelihoods

Human lives are lost in this conflict too, over 1,000 in the last 10 years. In 2020, a Presidential Committee was set up to formulate a National Actions Plan for HEC Mitigation. This committee comprised of all the relevant stake holders from the National to the Local Government levels, elephants researchers and scientists, conservation NGOs and informed lay people. The Plan’s primary focus was to keep people safe. This was to be achieved by erecting community based village and agricultural fencing, protecting people and their cultivation. This National Action Plan (NAP) commenced implementation in 2023 but with minimal budgetary allocations provided. Once again, a solution only partially tried and then forgotten, for the policymakers seek quick solution for a problem that has been decades in the making.

Cultivation and community fencing has been tried and tested, by the Centre for Conservation and Research (CCR) in over 70 villages in the North Central, North Western, Southern and North Eastern Provinces, with 100% success. There are around 300 paddy field fences erected by the Department of Agrarian Development in 2024 through the implementation of the NAP. That plus, some work done by the DWC of more diligent fence monitoring etc., appears to have helped because the elephant and human deaths in 2024 are less than 2023.

If the NAP had been implemented in full, much of what is taking place now could have been averted. As such, it was hoped that the new Government which was elected on a mandate of change, with a promise of letting science and informed knowledge lead the way, would implement in full this Plan of learned compilation. Instead, they seem to have stuck by those policies of old with only thought of the present, while damning the country and its future.

Saving a National Asset

Look at any website advertising the wonders of this little island and there will invariably be a picture of elephants and other wildlife displayed on it. It is the natural wonders of this country that draws visitors to it, with over 30% of them visiting National parks and other protected areas. They bring in millions of dollars of revenue to Sri Lanka. Without wildlife, who would come? It must be remembered that elephants are a keystone species vital for the well-being of a Park. Without them, the other wildlife, and the habitat, would rapidly deteriorate.

Future generations, the World, will never forgive us if we drive this unique subspecies of the Asian Elephant into extinction. If HEC is to be reduced, and it must, then the following should be undertaken:

· Set up a Presidential Task Force or Committee to facilitate, oversee and monitor the full implementation of the National Action Plan.

· Stop illegal encroachment into National Parks and other protected areas.

· Implement a system of planned development which takes into account the wildlife and other natural wonders of an area.

· Set up mechanisms for local communities to directly benefit from having wildlife as neighbours e.g. community based wildlife/bird watching outside of protected areas, selling of arts and crafts to tourists, village cookery lessons, etc.

· STOP ELEPHANT DRIVES.

It is hoped that sense will prevail.

Sunday Short Story

BY ERNEST MACINTYRE

John Hobbs a middle aged London actor was on holiday in Sydney Australia, all by himself. He ordered an early breakfast to his room at the Four Seasons Hotel at the harbour end of George Street. The coach to Katoomba in the Blue Mountains, for a viewing of the famous ancient rock formation, was leaving at nine that morning.

John’s long journey to the land occupied by his English ancestors over two and a half centuries ago had its strange beginning after John’s last performance. It was Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov, a month ago at the Olivier Theatre. John had a minor part, Vladimir Karlovich Rode a soldier of the regiment stationed close to the home of the three sisters.

Because his was a minor part, he spent much time in the wings absorbing this great play. When the run was finished the play continued to haunt him. He went to his laptop computer to search for, maybe, things about it he had yet to know, and then by accident struck on a mountain formation called Three Sisters, in faraway New South Wales, Australia.

He also read on his screen how the aboriginal people of Australia were not only dispossessed of their land by his ancestors, but how their culture was dismissed. This despite English research scholars unearthing evidence of a culture of humanity, long secluded. After breakfast John read the aboriginal legend behind the rock formation of the Three Sisters and made a print copy to read again on the coach.

The coach arrived at a quarter to nine and all the tourists, mostly English, were settled in. The driver then introduced their tour guide, who stood by the driver, to be seen. He was tall, well built and very dark in skin colour.

” Yes, my name is David Dalaithngu, Dala -ith-nugu”, he repeated. You may find it a little difficult to pronounce, so just call me David. The name David has deep roots in the Bible and means “beloved.” It is derived from the Hebrew name Dawid, which evolved from the Hebrew word dod, meaning beloved which was given to your English culture as David, from the New Testament. Then your culture gave it to my culture, an even older testament. That’s how the world goes on, backwards and forward, all spinning.”

The tourists laughed.

I am an actor in Australian theatre and film, but occasionally take on this role of tour guide to Katoomba, because I like telling you about us.

They laugh again, but more softly.

John’s interest was aroused, as a fellow actor. He introduced himself, as the coach began moving and managed to sit next to David Dalaithngu. John soon pulled out his paper with the printed aboriginal story of the Three Sisters of Katoomba. David said he knew it. John told David that somehow, he couldn’t shake out of his mind the famous play Three Sisters by Chekhov, when he read the Aboriginal story.

“Oh yes I saw that play at the Belconnen Theatre last year. I was too dark skinned to get a part. That play is of three white skinned sisters and their community I know the play well. Let me think about what you say, how it accidentally connected you up with our three sisters.

After more conversation and long silences, the coach arrived at Echo Point . They were soon, all seated on the viewing platform. A silence fell over as they all gazed into the distance at the three rock formations.

The Three sisters, each about nine hundred metres tall and standing shoulder to shoulder, towering over the Jamison Valley had stood there, ever evolving, for over two hundred million years.

The silently gazing people did not even notice that David Dalaithngu, their guide, had positioned himself microphone in hand to the side of the congregation.

David sensing the capture of the audience by the distant sight of the sisters, suddenly brought their attention back to him.

“Your brochures tell you that the three sisters came into being by wind and rain constantly sculpting the soft sandstone of the Blue Mountains. Our people of the Katoomba and Nepean tribes have known geography, like the tourist department people who wrote that. And my people also know our Dreamtime, which is the word your people gave to the religion of my people. But let us call it Dreamtime for this is a tourist excursion.

The Aboriginal dream-time legend has it that three sisters, ‘Mohini’, ‘Wimalah’ and ‘Gunnedoo’ lived in the Jamison Valley as members of the Katoomba tribe. These beautiful young ladies had fallen in love with three brothers from the Nepean tribe, yet tribal law forbade them to marry.

The Three Sisters in Chekhov’s play

Yes, my people also had law for thousands of years.”

There was laughter.

“The brothers were not happy to accept this law and so decided to use force to capture the three sisters causing a major tribal battle. As the lives of the three sisters were seriously in danger, a folk priest from the Katoomba tribe intervened. I call them priests for convenient cultural crossing: They had supernatural abilities, but distinct from gods and were only  revered. This priest took it upon himself to turn the three sisters into stone to protect them from any harm.”

David broke off from the dreamtime story, for a moment.

” I was converted to Christianity by your people and I’m as happy as I was with our ancient dreamtime religion. I thought of it just now because I remember the story in the Bible, in Genesis and in Luke, in the New Testament, how Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt for looking back at Sodom.”

“Anyway, to get back, while our ancient folk priest had intended to reverse the spell when the battle was over, the folk priest himself was killed. As only he could reverse the spell to return the ladies to their former human state, the sisters remain in their magnificent rock formation as a reminder of this dreamtime happening, up to this day for you, and beyond, as long as time.

That is enough for you to think about. And now I will call upon a friend I made during the coach journey this morning. He is English, but an actor, much in theatre, like me, so we are ethnically apart but culturally together. He had some interesting comments about another three sisters from your European culture and our Australian three sisters.

Laughter again.

“John, please” John Hobbs came up and took David Dalaithngu’s place.

“This I did not expect, I only made some comments to David while in the coach. Well, now that I’m standing before you let me blurt out a few strange and stray thoughts.”

He told them how Google of his laptop played an exciting trick on him throwing up the Australian story instead of the Russian, when he searched Three Sisters and that’s why he’s here now. He then made a short aside. “The ship I came on stopped for a day in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and there I came across that the names of two of these three sisters, Mohini and Wimalah are common amongst Sri Lanka women. Maybe a very distant connection.”

“Anyway, to get back, as the computer trick suggests, it is possibly mere coincidence that there are two families of three sisters separated by thousands of physical and cultural miles, and more staggeringly, by about more than a million years, but both time and cultural distance did not obliterate for me the human condition.

“I thought of Chekov’s Three sisters, and how that story ends.”

“The years will pass, and we shall be gone for good and quite forgotten… our faces and our voices will be forgotten and people won’t even know that there were once three sisters here..”

“These words from Chekhov came to me…. mystically……I don’t know …. Thank you”

David Dalaithngu closed the session with a light remark. “And now before lunch, we move to the pub, walking distance from here, for some good Aussie beer, also cultural, and I love it.”

The congregation arose, not responding immediately. They all turned to look again at ‘Mohini’, ‘Wimalah’ and ‘Gunnedoo’ Three sisters, still here.