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| Sunday, 7 April 2002 |
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New sustainable Agriculture Policy in the offing by Don Asoka Wijewardena Plans are underway to introduce a "sustainable agricultural policy" with structural transformation to help the environment in the country, said the Minister of Agriculture, Livestock and Samurdhi, S.B. Dissanayaka. He was inaugurating a national workshop on "Sri Lankan Agriculture for the Next Decade" at the HARTI conference hall, Colombo. The Minister said that this would be done by the Hector Kobbbekaduwa Agrarian Research Training Institute in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture. The Minister said that a sustainable agricultural policy would be a boon to Sri Lanka to achieve objectives in agriculture. A durable solution for food security that would mainly focus its attention to alleviate rural poverty to a large extent as the agriculture in Sri Lanka during the last decade suffered from stagnation of production, which resulted in creating a bleak future of farmers. The co-ordinator of the workshop, Dr W.G. Somaratne, said the new agricultural policy would be the target achievement of 5 per cent growth in the agricultural sector per year and sustaining it over the coming decades would be a major challenge for Sri Lanka.He noted that the new policy would create market and people-friendly approaches to agricultural development and would include four major strategies. These would be integration to the global economy improving the climate for agro enterprise,investment in people and technology and maintenance of macro-economic stability. Director (macroeconomic policies) Department of National Planning, Dr R.H.S. Samaratunge,said that as the staple diet in Sri Lanka was rice and the country needed 2.05 million metric tons of rice per year, but Sri Lanka produced only 1.87 million mt per year,compelling the government to import O.18 million metric tons per year costing Rs 3639 million annually. He stressed that the new agricultural policy would plan out and implement a self-sufficiency drive and produce the country's needs and thereby the country would be able to save Rs 3639 million per year. Dr W.M. Tilakaratne (Senior Lecture in Agriculture University of Perade- niya, Dr Nihal Atapattu (Director Projects) Ministry of Agriculture and Dr P.A. Samaratunge (Director Socio-Economic and Planning) Department of Agriculture also delivered lectures at the workshop. |
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