Students encouraged to promote agriculture

by Omar RAJARATHNAM

Minister of Agriculture Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena requested school students to pay more attention towards agriculture, to make the country self-sufficient in food production. Minister Yapa Abeywardena was speaking at a function organised to distribute saplings among schoolchildren to create awareness among them about environment and agriculture.

The Ministries of Education and Agriculture have provided four million saplings to school students countrywide to be planted during the New Year season. A special ceremony was held at Navarangahala at Royal College, Colombo, where Minister of Education Bandula Gunawardena and Western Province Agriculture Minister Udaya Gammanpila were also present. Minister Gunawardena said:

"We are laying the foundation for students to improve the country's agriculture and contribute to long-term economic development by distributing these saplings to be planted during the Sinhala and Hindu New Year. "The main objective of education is to encourage attitudinal change and we have targeted school students to promote the concept of home gardening and contribute to the country's agriculture in every way possible. This will reduce our dependency on artificially processed food, to maintain a nutritional diet", Minister said.

Minister Abeywardena said that historically, we were an agriculturally self-sufficient nation but we lost the momentum because of the war against terrorism. Now is the best time to rebuild our agricultural sector."The demand for organic produce from developed countries is rising significantly and the scientists are predicting that nine billion people will face a food scarcity by 2030. This initiative is the Government's pro-active measure to prepare the country for self-sufficiency again and prevent being affected by the predicted adversities, he said.

Minister Gammanpila said, this initiative should minimise complaints regarding the high cost of living.