Wet Zone rice culture - Never too late

By Dr. M. P. Dhanapala, Technical Advisor, JICA - Tsukuba International Center, Ibaraki, Japan

Three decades ago, in 1970s, we woke up every morning with around 700 additional mouths to feed. That was the trend in population growth, at the onset of green revolution in rice, when emphasis was placed primarily on the enhancement of productivity in rice. At present, the population growth rate is far below this prediction then but, yet we have to feed a substantial number of additional mouths daily.

Despite this increase in the demand for rice, we have no new lands to be brought under plough. Also, "tsunami" may have taken a heavy toll on productive paddy lands of the eastern and southern districts. Moreover, the extent of cultivated land is diminishing rapidly. Land value in urban areas is gaining fast and more and more paddy lands are being used as sites for industrial purposes, factories, buildings, houses etc. despite the paddy land act is in force.

Many paddy lands in the Wet Zone are abandoned for different reasons. For example, in the Gampaha district alone more than eighty percent of the total paddy extent is lying fallow. This would be the general status in the entire wet zone, which accounts for nearly 25 percent of the total paddy extent of 0.73 million ha of the country. Without bringing these fallow lands back to cultivation, we would never be comfortable with food security in our major staple, rice. The rice price is already beyond the reach of the poor and the middle class; if at all the so called middle class exists.

The major reason for abandoning Wet Zone rice lands was quoted as the high literacy rate. The new generation may not want to be farmers even if they belong to the rural farming community. Once an Indian expert inquired about the literacy rate of Sri Lanka to advise on sugar cane cultivation in Inginimitiya project. Learning the literacy rate of the country, his immediate response was "forget sugar cane at all". We are already convinced that the literacy rate has something to do with occupation in agriculture but, this cannot be the sole factor determining people to move away from rice culture.

A farmer of Gampaha District pointed out once, the inadequate maintenance of irrigation facilities as the major reason for abandoning paddy tracts but, could it be the major reason in the Wet Zone? With a cumulative annual rainfall well above 2000 mm, the major problem appears to be drainage; not irrigation. At least one should be able to grow one rice crop a year, the traditionally adopted system in the wet zone, with proper timing of the season to avoid floods and drought spells.

Undoubtedly the Wet Zone paddy lands of mineral soils can be cultivated during both seasons of the year. These lands are devoid of soil problems and frequent floods; some times are provided with supplementary irrigation facilities.

The low-lying coastal belt of half bog and bog paddy soils may experience inundation, floods and soil problems associated with anaerobic decomposition of organic matter. These are marginal areas for paddy; particularly the tracts within the region up to 1 m above mean sea level. Do we have sustainable alternatives to replace paddy from these tracts? What are the alternative, nonperishable crops adapted to such marshy lands? Do we need them in large quantities or would we be able to have a different approach like development of the land into ditch and dyke (sorjhan) system to utilize dykes for shallow rooted crops, vegetables and ditches for some form of aquaculture; apparently a too expensive concept involving huge investment in land development and drainage? if no sustainable alternatives available, we have to continue with paddy, especially location specific cultivars with appropriate packages of practices. Remember, the Indian and Bangladesh farmers are surviving in flood prone lands much worse than what have in Sri Lanka. The rest of the flood prone, low lying areas are traditional Ma wee lands, which can be cultivated to improved Ma wee cultivars.

The paddies of inland valleys, 1st order valleys in particular, may have soil toxicity problems related to excessive Iron and Aluminum leaching from the adjoining upland. To improve the paddy yields of these tracts, the sub soil drainage has to be improved by having drainage/irrigation channels dug deep on either side along the tracts, well below the field surface level, to contain emerging spring water (fluxial water) from the adjoining highland. The impact of provision of subsoil drainage was never researched in Sri Lanka but, is a proven technology adopted in Japan in major paddy tracts. The recent visit I made to Rice Research and Development Institute, Batalagoda made me to understand that they have already realized the importance of subsoil drainage in Wet Zone paddy lands.

The progress in the productivity of rice was achieved in quantum jumps and a five fold increase in crop productivity is seen today when compared to the colonial era. Highly productive quality rice types like Bg 360 and Basmathi derivatives were also made available through cross breeding.

The market price of rice in the country is high due to shortage of paddy during off season but how much of this goes to the farmer. These prices are still cheaper than the cheapest rice I can afford in Japan which costs Japanese Yen 178 per kg; the rupee equivalent of which is around Rs. 155. The above is a fabulous price from any Sri Lankan standards, but the question is why this is this. There should be some hidden tariff structure behind the whole issue to protect the Japanese rice farmer (not the middle man) and to safeguard the countries' food security. If so why cannot we do it - may be not very attractive politically?

Indian surplus

On the other hand there is surplus rice production in India. An Indian friend of mine conveyed to me that in Eastern India alone has a surplus production of milled rice right now to feed the population of Sri Lanka for the next 7 years. Their cost of production is lower and rice is comparatively cheap. Is it due to the productivity of the rice variety or productivity of the land or productivity of the climate or productivity of the farmer? How does India produce cheap rice when the national average of rice yields is low and not even comparable to ours? We have to examine the key factors involved; subsidy structure, the emphasis placed on Boro rice production, the low/no cost electricity to pump irrigate the Boro rice crop and its productivity; the exploitation of natural soil fertility renewed annually in the flood planes of big rivers; the incentives given to the farmers; the encouragement and recognition given to the scientists; the investments made in rice research and development and the acceptance of proven technologies by the farming community.

People do not adhere to paddy cultivation, if they have any other occupation, simply due to the reason that the paddy cultivation is the least remunerative of all the occupations. Historically the farmers cultivated paddy because of the social dignity, the pride they had in consuming rice grown locally. This situation existed for centuries. No effective counter measures were taken to relieve the farmer from his agony but, left him in his span cloth throughout the history due to the very fact that he was innocent, non-aggressive, unorganized and pose no threat to the society or policy makers.

No one was bothered to be sensitive enough to the heartbeat of the farmer. We only exploited the farmer, his soul and labour, to consume rice cheap. The millionaires in the rice industry are not farmers; but the millionaires are millionaires because of the sweat of the rice farmer, whom was ignored very conveniently in giving the fair share. Why not let him have his share when consumer pays a high price? This inherent parasitic attitude and the deliberate negligence of the farmer had been detrimental to rice farming. If you still believe that the uneducated are the farmers, only filth comes to my mind to address you. That is my gut feeling. The present day farming community knows that they know. As a result the increased literacy rate moved the farming community gradually away from agriculture, from paddy cultivation in particular, knowing very well that there is no future in it.

Burning issues

By and large the above is not the exact account to be conveyed by this script. There were few things beyond my comprehension throughout my career in the Rice Research and Development Institute, Sri Lanka, and even now. In many instances when I attended farmer fora to discuss technical issues I was never encountered with technical problems pertaining to rice. The farmers had much more burning issues than technical ones. If I put them down in some order, the first would be irrigation related issues, the next is timely availability of inputs and cost of inputs, then comes the agricultural loans, credits and subsidies, then the damage by wild animals, specifically wild boar and finally comes the marketing issues, paddy prices etc. It is difficult to point the finger at any one on these issues because every one has readymade answers for not doing it rather than doing it. The desperate appeal of the farmer would be to solve these issues for him. The policy makers should have a positive approach in solving them and ask themselves "not why?" but "why not?", and solve them.

It is hard to believe why even a simple issue like wild boar damage is not contained simply by issuing permits for any one to kill and well wild boar meat in the open market. People know how to kill if they are allowed to sell the meat. In America people are permitted to kill deer when population is exploding; in Australia kangaroos, when become a menace.

If the above issues were solved, the next the farmer encountered would be the technological issues, for which the Department of Agriculture has field tested, refined package to bridge the yield gap and improve and sustain productivity in rice.

This package could be adopted for the wet zone agro-ecological regions,with slight modifications, to improve rice productivity. Otherwise, abandoning of paddy fields and moving the farming community away from paddy cultivation is inevitable and this situation can be anticipated in time to come even in the productive paddy lands of the Dry Zone.