Burning farmland, viewed from the plane to Trinco
In his various avatars, Rajaratrala is up in arms about the new government home garden plan. Divi Neguma (or Divineguma) is, as far as I understand it, a plan to fund people to grow their own food. This will supposedly relieve them from food price rises and lead to more self-sufficiency. Governments around the world – from Indonesia to America – have made farming a political issue rather than an economic one. Their meddling usually bills taxpayers to make things worse.
Raja was an active farmer until he got run over by a government minister’s convoy.
It is preposterous for a senior minister in government to say that the above program will uplift the lives of one million households. Just think about the logic. They are supposed to provide the basics, so that households will become self sufficient in many areas including food production, but also on livelihood development. This if one takes a five person household should positively affect 25% of the population of this country. Are they dreaming in technicolor?
The hundred rupees of seeds given to my neighbor in Hingurakgoda as part of the program did not even germinate, such is the quality of the seeds they provide. You can take a horse to water but cannot force it to drink. (Divineguma – A Way Too Hoodwink A Nation)
When Mervyn Silva told people to deal with vegetable prices by growing their own people laughed, but it’s now a serious government policy. It’s a bit odd that a policy that giving out packets of seeds to people in the face of rising food prices is being taken seriously. What about, you know, actual economic management?
Telling people to farm is like telling them to go back in time. Farming may be a lifestyle that people hark back to fondly, but most young people want to get a better paying job in services or industry. The agricultural share of GDP has been dropping steadily for decades while the value of services is increasing.
People are also not doing agriculture to eat, which is also called subsistence farming. Most people earn wages and spend money to buy, you know, tinned fish. “Out of the total household income, around 86 percent of the income is received as monetary income in 2009//10 and 2006/07” (statistics.gov.lk).
There are broad economic forces that the government is trying to hold back with a handful of seeds. If instead they focused on inflation, reducing wasteful spending and funded education instead of fertilizer, that would have a more direct effect on peoples lives. Let them eat cake is one thing. This is let them grow the ingredients and make it at home.
It is absolutely true that “Telling people to farm is [percieved by most to be] like telling them to go back in time. Farming may be a lifestyle that people hark back to fondly, but most young people want to get a better paying job in services or industry.”
However, food is arguably the truely essential item for survival that needs a significant about of labour and skill to produce. If an asteroid were to hit Earth, we will 9hopefully) soon learn to live without banking, insurence (ironically) and most commodities. As the population grows, even if we wipe out the habitats of all other animals, the equilibrium will be hinged on a balance between how much space we need to dwell and how much we need to grow our food – even if we all live out of space and use the landmass of eratch purely for agriculture).
But how is it that “development” these days is invariably associated with people giving up agriculture and taking up jobs in industry and services?
More farmers doesn’t mean more food, it often just means lower productivity.
If the worry is food security and prices, the government could simply reduce tariffs on wheat and rice.
The time and effort of government should be spent in productive ventures not political gimmicks to keep people enslaved. People must learn to rise up and criticize these foolish policies because the holistic vision is a vacuum. Until a visionary approach returns no amount of bankrupt themes clouded in fancy words will make a real difference to the social and economical wellbeing of the people of this country.
Plenty of people in rural areas (where the bulk of Sri Lankans live) have enough land to grow a few veggies for their own use. Even in the west a lot of people have a vegetable patch in their garden. What’s so fucking difficult in growing a karapincha plant, a tomato vine, a chilli tree or a Gotukola patch at home? It’s not like the soil in SL is infertile. And you hardly need to water in the wet zone. The fact is that a lot of Sri Lankans are lazy bitches.
Wow that sounded like hot air that a politician would spout.
Exactly Zoid, giving them seeds aint gonna get them to plant them. You have to change the mindset of the people first, to understand right from wrong and good from bad. Then the transformation will be automatic and not require slogans and time wasting projects
Encouraging people to have a vegetable patch at home is a good thing. It could improve the quality of the nutrition of a family, but couldn’t make a significant contribution to the economy.
Agriculture is important for food security and we shouldn’t depend on imported food with all the funny climatic changes that are happening around the world. Rural farmers wouldn’t move away from agriculture if the returns were adequate and certain. The seasonal nature of most agricultural produce results in wastage and low returns for the farmer.
We need capital investment in the areas of value addition to fresh produce, like dehydration plants and canning facilities and storage facilities. We also need coherent planning of agricultural activity, like producing for identified markets and having the ancilliary services ready for the produce to reach the market safely. This is what the government should encourage.
agreed Shammi. Honestly, you can get seeds quite easily and cheaply. I recently saw them outside the Bellanwilla temple last Poya, for example. There’s really no need to spend government money to build another distribution network for something readily available.
If it costs you Rs. 50 to distributes something that costs Rs. 50 it isn’t really free. And it’s somebody else’s money
Self sufficiency is the shortest path to increased poverty. Diversification, specialization and interdependence creates wealth and opportunity.
Growing our own food is not sustainable nor is it a good idea. We have specialized so that we would be able focus well on a few tasks, divert our resources (especially time) effectively etc. This video sums it up nicely http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOQGiveUxf8&feature=player_embedded
Matt Ridley made an interesting case against self sufficiency in The Rational Optimist (came out in 2010 I think). Do have a look if you haven’t already.
Specialisation might benefit the average American. But the goodness and freshness of abundant imported fruit we get here is highly questionable. The shiny unblemished exterior is due to a pesticide laced wax bath the fruit is given in order to increase it’s shelf life. So, until our average man is able to afford airlifted fresh produce from abroad instead of stuff that languished on a long voyage in the hold of some cargo ship, it would be wiser to pay a little extra for locally produced fresh fruit and veg, or try to grow a little for home consumption. Of course the government need not bust the budget on the exercise, a little encouragement would do.
Another issue is the practise of dumping, that is so easily accomplished here with crooked officials and ill informed consumers. I shudder every time I see the proliferation of cheap Chinese toys, wondering whether they were poisonous rejects form elsewhere.
Also, I wonder whether specialisation assures access, when it comes to the poorer segments of a population, because the good stuff always has a better market overseas. The tea that the common man gets to drink here is mostly poor quality dust, despite our reputation for quality tea. Kenyans are tea drinkers, even though they supply beans for the best coffee brands in the world. Ordinary Kenyans simply cant afford to drink coffee.
I do appreciate cheap imported potatoes when our is out of season, but our own Nuwara Eliya variety always tastes better to me.
A much better idea would be to give local farmers access to better farm equipment, perhaps even training in modern agricultural techniques, etc. Yes, 1-2% of the population can feed 100% of the population; that’s pretty much the norm in the USA and I’m guessing other developed nations. What are the benefits here if local farmers are self-sufficient – no need to import rice from India, less fluctuation in vegetable/meat/dairy products at the market, and three, greater output in general, resulting in downward pressure on the market price.
Better for people to consume the genetically engineered stuff, at least temporarily, than starve. Last time I checked the malnutrition stats for S. Lanka, they were not good. This is a particularly serious issue for under-aged children and infants/toddlers. If they don’t consume enough protein, the damage caused can be permanent , as in diminished height, increased susceptibility to certain diseases, etc.
As people’s incomes rise, they can choose better quality food.
No surprise about China, which favors quantity over quality. I have always strongly opposed trading with China, as only three groups of people benefit in the long run: (I) China, (II) corporations, (III) politicians. The consumer may think he’s getting a good deal, but if the product is likely to break down in a relatively short period of time, the consumer was better off going with the far longer-lasting name brand (since having to replace over and over again will increase the cost substantially).
Lets not confuse the “self sufficiency” of farmers (the benefits of which you have kindly outlined above) with that of regular folk who work in other sectors. Asking everyone to be self sufficient and contribute to this pseudo “agrarian” economy of sorts in terms of what they grow, produce and eat is ludicrous and not sustainable.
Of course 1-2% of the pop can feed the rest. Thats my point. Technology (not just machinery) is the answer. Farming has come a long way and we should put an end to this low yield organic farming doctrine that is sweeping the country. The numbers just don’t add up.
What is it with people and GM hate? do you even understand how crops were selectively bred by human beings over the centuries? choosing a particular crop and nurturing a higher yielding strain was one of the first things that humans did. This is an implicit form of genetic modification. Humans created rice from a species of wild grass by a process of artificial selection.
Next came the intermediate period where people like Norman Borlaugh pioneered a more explicit approach (with the new found knowledge in genetics etc) this was even adopted in Sri Lanka (at the Rice Research Institute et.al), GM food is the next obvious step. Better, effective targeted solutions to the kind of crisis we face in terms of pests, low yields etc. I agree with Heshan but I must also add that GM food can be the answer to widespread starvation and malnutrition especially in developing countries, farming like “we used to do in the good old days” is simply not sustainable i.e it cannot feed everyone on this planet. People like the late Dr Ray Wijewarndena have pointed out a set of specific “reforms” if you will that need to be implemented to overhaul the agrarian sector in this country. The unanimous agreement of the scientific community has been and will be that the agrarian sector must modernize if it wants to keep pace and address the challenges of this century, and giving incentives (which are likely to fail and cost the country even more) to “grow your own food at an individual level” is surely a step in the wrong direction!
This is what happens when political logic trumps economic rationale
Or bitches that contribute to the economy in other ways and in other sectors. Its called specialization. Honestly I wonder where these jokers (politicians) come from? sure sure there is nothing wrong with telling rural folk to grow their own food. Let me highlight two issues regarding the claim that you are making:
1) The government has launched a campaign to encourage EVERYONE to grow their own food as it were. This is not a targeted program aimed at improving yields (yields being a major part of the real issue), sure the rural folk might grow their own food under this scheme in their “vegge patches” as you put it, but like I said this is not the stated goal of the program! perhaps a better approach would be to “encourage” rural FARMERS (not EVERYONE) to contribute more efficiently/productively and effectively (by using modern agrarian tech) to the yields and finally to the entire agrarian sector.
2) Growing karapincha and other herbs is not difficult, I myself do a spot of gardening (help my parents rather) on weekends since we have quite a bit of land, but nothing serious has come out of it, the parents do it for recreation and we enjoy a Sunday meal with some handpicked veges but having a vege patch 20 perches large cant sustain my family for more than two days! c’mon lets be serious here! The issue here is thus: we have a problem in terms of food security and yields, the problem should be a top economic priority of the country and as such should be addressed in a rigorous and scientific manner with sound economic and scientific policies. The measure proposed is a myopic policy put forward by a populist government (aimed at securing votes etc) and fails in terms of scale. The scale of the issue in terms of the factors involved and its reach is very very large. A solution to such a problem must address this issue of scale. There is a principle in process engineering with regard to scaling up of manufacturing processes which we can extrapolate to agriculture in this context. Simply summing up individual contributions and trying to address a much more scaled and complex problem (high demand, low yields, high cost) does not work. For example consider a household that manufactures curd and treacle and sells about 50 units a month, this isn’t a very large “business” its just an ancillary income of the household (they are farmers, own buffalo and cattle etc). Let us assume that there is a sudden surge in demand for this particular “brand” of curd and they decide to “scale up” as it were i.e increase production to meet the demand. Replacing their collection of tiny curd producing fermenting vats with a massive vat that uses the same technology as the small vats does not work. The scaling up of any manufacturing process (and agricultural process) must be done with careful study and scientific rigor. The scaling up problem is one of the major issues in process engineering (and with good reason). Growing/producing something at a larger scale requires a fundamentally different approach. The policy of the government is so asinine and myopic that they have failed to address this issue of scale. They seem to be living in this weird world where the answer to this complex problem of yields,costs etc is not a targeted economic policy combined with technological advancements/modernizing the agrarian sector but of summing up the individual efforts of individuals who grow a few wambatu and raddish in their backyards. One wonders as to how they would even measure the results of this so called “policy”? will a government agent go from door to door examining the vegetable patches in each household, tally the daily produce, weigh it and conclude “aha its working dammit!”, I mean there must be a measure to get a sense of where the program is going in terms of costs/benefits! data dammit! a subjective feeling that “more people are growing their own food” has as much rigor as the claim that “a lot of Sri Lankans are lazy bitches”
PS:
Next thing you know it the government will hand out incentives and subsidies to grow our own cotton, make our own clothes, gather are own fuel (firewood!)…etc you see my point?
Do you have a “patch” at your place? we do and its quite big (20+ perches in fact) and it takes a ton of back breaking work in terms of removing weeds and not to mention takes some cash for fertilizer, water etc also you have to rotate the crops so forget about eating wambatu all year round. Its tougher than they make it to be and almost like a full time job. This is why we have farmers :D because hey whayddya know IT IS A FULL TIME JOB!
Also the produce doesn’t last that long and one has to wait for weeks after planting new seeds to see even the hint of a wambatu/tomato/etc. I’m just glad that we have supermarkets! if we had to survive on our vege patch we would go hungry for weeks!
There are some plans to build a greenhouse but after several years of growing this stuff I’m very pessimistic. I guess we do it for recreation :)
Any other “farmers” want to share their stories?
Actually I do, and have been growing stuff long before Mervyn Silva got the idea. It’s not all that difficult either. Of course I cajole people to do most of the digging for me, or sometimes employ my mother’s bad tempered old gardener who has to be regularly primed with plain tea. I basically ignore the plants once they’re grown and they yeild for me. Obviously I have a green thumb. :P
I’m proud to say that I grow enough spinach and gotukola for ourselves and to give away as well and also a little kangkung. Since friends supply us with katurumurunga and some other greens we rarely need to buy leafy stuff. I’ve grown brinjals, okra, all kinds of gourds and winged bean before, quite successfully. Tomatoes are a little difficult, because they easily get some disease and I cant bother spraying them. I never even water these plants anymore (did it a bit initially), because we use electricity to pump water from the well.
What you do is, dig a trench, like 2′ wide, and 2′ deep ( I usually do it along the north south axis, to ensure plenty of sunlight) and keep filling it with things like vegetable parings, discarded seeds, onion skins, coconut refuse and the bits you discard from sprats etc. and also dried leaves that are swept up. When its quite full, which may take like 3 months, you add a lot of Albizzia leaves. Then you dig another trench (maybe parralel to the first) and use the dirt to top up the first one. The heap will subside eventually, and after about 3 months or sometimes a little longer when everything has decayed, you turn the compost in the pit a bit (adding a little sand sometimes improves the texture) and when it rains later, (as it has been regularly for the last few years) you get all kinds of seedlings coming up from the compost heap. When you can recognise them, they could be replanted elsewhere with some of the mature compost, or if there aren’t too many, you can leave them as they are. Otrherwise you just buy seeds and plant them. I never buy fertilizer.
You do need to weed, but any garden needs that.
I’ve got half a dozen papaya trees planted this way, and right now they yeild like 10 kg of fruit per week. Also a massive pumpkin vine which bore lots of pretty flowers but just one fruit, and several bushes of the tiny variety of batu. we have enough karapincha, screwpine, celery and pepper. We have ambarella that bears throughout the year and two kinds of guavas, and plantains in plenty growing in a wet spot, all unattended. We even had a few pineapple bushes, which we had to uproot as a dengue prevention measure.
p.s.: Your parents must be really proud, Einstein. I saw them and your sister when your brother (with another fellow) swept the board at the school prizegiving recently, and you still have time to help with the gardening!
Nothing wrong with GM food, except that’s it tasteless. This is no surprise, considering how much pesticide is put in the soil, and then you have the growth hormones injected into cattle and vegetables. I remember my mother using organic fertilizer for her planting; having been stuck with supermarket tomatoes and the like for a while now, I can appreciate the difference in taste. Yes, even the fertilizer makes a big difference in the final quality of what you grow. Planting is an art (why is why I don’t do it), much as anything else.
But you’re correct that everyone doing it is not sustainable in the long run. Exponential population growth in developing nations coupled with limited resources, not least of all, land , will require a more proactive solution. Plus with each passing generation, more and more young people prefer to move to the cities, aka “urban phenomenon.” This is particularly true as incomes rise, you have a demographic shift from rural to urban. To keep supply at adequate levels, rural farmers will have to resort to more modern techniques (no more water buffalo), or else food will have to be imported. I suspect SL will head down this road eventually.
Hmm we kinda have the same stuff papaws, pineapples, bananas, pumpkins, pepper LOTS of ambarella but growing vegetables takes more work I guess. Ditto on the north-south axis, ditto also on the not needing to but leafy stuff, I guess I was referring to brinjals and other veges, ours get eaten by monkeys and porcupines!
As for fertilizer theres a clear difference when you go ahead and use it. Perhaps you DO have a green thumb after all?
What were you doing at school? yes hes keeping a tradition of sorts alive :P also, was that a compliment or sarcasm? Text can only convey so much
*buy leafy stuff
Anybody want to donate some seeds that can make David BlockHead’s hair grow back?
What was I doing there? Attending the prizegiving. No, I wasn’t being sarcastic, even if you DO seem a bit smart-alecky. Being a mother myself, it’s nice to see a dutiful son. : )
The epitome of all bullshit:
‘I can’t print money to pay dons’
June 28, 2011, 12:00 pm
It was not possible for the government to grant the salary increases demanded by university teachers, President Mahinda Rajapaksa said yesterday. There was a salary structure and the government had to stick to it and paying a salary of Rs. 200,000 to a university professor was impossible, he said.
—
86 buggers can join him on the plane ride to Russia, millions of rupees can be sent on PR firms like Bell-Pottinger, importing luxury cars for the jumbo cabinet is okay, renting 4 hotel floors in New York is okay, letting Mihin Airlines go bankrupt THREE times (with PUBLIC money) is okay, building a useless cricket stadium in Humbugtota is okay, not to mention 500 bodyguards to guard himself. But he can’t pay 200K SLR to the profs, who actually render the country a valuable service.
:)
If history is anything to go by we are heading for a crisis of humungous proportions not least due to very populist but wholly impractical policies. It is those who will have to live here in the future who will damn us for sitting on our bums and doing nothing because we have been socked into submission by this regime.