Sri Lanka’s collision with nature: Lessons from India to address the agrarian crisis

Restructuring of Sri Lanka’s paddy economy is a significant priority, especially since 86% of the destruction to agriculture is concentrated on the paddy sector.

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Following the 1935 soil chemistry findings of the Thopawewa and Parakarama Samudra Development Scheme, Brohier warned that the dry-zone soil structure is not entirely suited to carry out large-scale resettlements centred on paddy cultivation. He noted that the ‘luxuriant tropical forest’ of the dry-zone was a mirage of fertility caused by perennial plant foliage

Consequently, Indian farmers have successfully replaced the use of agrochemicals with a combination of mechanical tools and a more sophisticated understanding of cultivation and environmental factors. Simultaneously, the labour freed by introducing new machinery into agriculture is reabsorbed into producing agricultural machinery

Nature seems to beat war with a market-driven investment pattern, slowly decaying the means of survival for the masses. In many ways, this ecological pushback expressed through Cyclone Ditwah mirrors the 2022 people’s uprising, which sought to overthrow an entrenched political establishment. Just as that quest remains incomplete, nature is waging its own campaign against an economy dictated by self-interest. As the climate breaks, more decisive acts of defiance from the natural world appear inevitable, mirroring the political and economic struggles that lie ahead for the masses.

Agricultural over-extension

The current state of agriculture in Sri Lanka serves as an important catalyst to climate disasters. The graph below shows the extreme over-extension of agricultural land use in Sri Lanka, particularly since 2004. According to World Bank data, land under agriculture in Sri Lanka has surged from nearly 36% in 2004 to over 48% by 2023, which is significantly higher than the average for low and middle-income countries. 

This is further reflected by total paddy lands under cultivation increasing to over 700,000 hectares in the 2024/25 Maha season from nearly 500,000 in 2004 (Census data). It is also important to note that agricultural land only constitutes 29% of the total in high income economies which was declining over the years, indicating that developed capitalist centres have moved away from extensively exploiting the land compared to the periphery. This highlights mainly a dual problem: first, agricultural overextension increases the severity and vulnerability of average Sri Lankans to climate disasters. Secondly, a serious lack of qualitatively acceptable employment in the non-agricultural sector is forcing people more and more to retreat into land-based incomes,  despite its many dangers and threats,  as the only means of survival. This in turn accelerates environmental destruction. This overreliance on land, ironically, has now become a serious threat to long-term survival. 

Sri Lanka urgently needs to find ways of reducing its landmass and workforce under agriculture, without stoking inflation, a drop in food availability and foreign reserves, while at the same time generating qualitatively acceptable employment outside agriculture. If we fail to do so, the requirement for emergency assistance and reconstruction due to climate disasters will become a permanent feature, given the high possibility of such future disasters. In this connection, restructuring of Sri Lanka’s paddy economy is a significant priority, especially since 86% of the destruction to agriculture is concentrated on the paddy sector (FAO data).

Need to raise national savings

Monitoring the vulnerability of the external sector is critical. Despite the sharp increase in labour remittances, foreign reserves declined in the absence of IMF funding. This compromise makes a large-scale agricultural and industrial transformation difficult, without increasing national savings through restricting luxury imports, particularly personal vehicles, and reducing the foreign debt burden through creditor renegotiation, a strategy advocated by a group of 121 eminent economists. Rather than relying on luxury import taxes that deplete reserves to generate revenue, these savings should be channelled into a dedicated Treasury foreign exchange account through Central Bank (CBSL) market purchases. CBSL balance sheet should be integrated with this special account, preventing its liabilities outstripping assets. This can secure the capital required to launch a transformation in agriculture and industry that this discussion seeks to address.

Fundamental issues in agriculture

Two interconnected issues are crucial when understanding the structure of paddy agriculture in Sri Lanka and its overextension. Firstly, Sri Lanka’s agriculture as a whole is using over 50% more fertiliser per acre compared to India,  while yielding less per acre. The average fertiliser use in India and high-income economies is approximately 210kg and 114kg per hectare respectively, while Sri Lanka surged to nearly 300kg/hectare by 2020 from nearly 150kg/hectare in 1980 (see graph below). This massive increase in chemical input has not translated into better yields. Since 1980, while fertiliser use per hectare surged 100%, aggregate cereal yields shown by the FAO UN increased significantly less from 3 to 3.8 tons per hectare. This,  coupled with the rise in the share of total land under agriculture emphasised earlier  shows that Sri Lankan farmers were moving into less fertile, marginal lands -- areas that require more chemicals just to maintain baseline yields.

The same pattern holds for pesticides. Sri Lanka uses 1.08kg/acre compared to India’s 0.24kg/acre, which is well over four times (see graph below). This environmentally and biologically hazardous level of chemicals application likely contributes to the high prevalence of Chronic Kidney Disease (CKDU) among Sri Lankan farmers, while per hectare yield of paddy remains low compared to India’s,  approximately six to seven tons per hectare in some high yielding paddy lands. 

Hazardous application of agrochemicals,  hand in hand with lower yields,  escalate unit production cost and food costs of the domestic workforce in the absence of cheaper food imports. Sri Lanka in this context needs to release at least 20% of its paddy land (around 350,000 acres) -- especifically in the low-yielding, flood-prone areas encroached upon in recent decades -- without a serious reduction in output,  and transition the workforce into higher-quality non-agrarian employment.   

Historical misconceptions and soil realities

This issue of higher agrochemicals application in Sri Lanka, insufficient yields and the resulting higher food costs is further compounded by the unfavourable climatic and soil conditions, especially in the North Central Province (NCP) which supplies nearly 40% of the country’s paddy output. As the late Dr S. B. D. De Silva often noted, unlike in the riverbeds of India or Bangladesh,  where paddy cultivation is  naturally replenished by slow overflowing rivers, Sri Lanka’s dry-zone lands are subjected to flash floods and torrential monsoonal rains preceded by long spells of dry weather. This tends to leach out the nutrients of the less cohesive soil. The same position was reiterated by R. L. Brohier, Chairman of the Gal Oya Development Board, in 1941 in his History of Irrigation and Agricultural Colonisation in Ceylon. 

Following the 1935 soil chemistry findings of the Thopawewa and Parakarama Samudra Development Scheme, Brohier warned that the dry-zone soil structure is not entirely suited to carry out large-scale resettlements centred on paddy cultivation. He noted that the ‘luxuriant tropical forest’ of the dry-zone was a mirage of fertility caused by perennial plant foliage. This vibrant plant growth in the uninhibited dry zone lands  misled  ancient settlers to believe that the soil itself was fertile. Once cleared for seasonal paddy, the soil exposed its inherent deficiencies. Historically, this weakness may have likely left the civilisation vulnerable to invasions due to the difficulty of sustaining a large standing army on a fragile food base. 

Brohier emphasised that ‘in the event of the secondary soil [lower grade soil] being used for paddy, crop yields must necessarily be poor. Its soil composition is more congenial for growing fruit trees such as coconut or citrus’. He further states that ‘the secondary paddy soil can be placed only in the third class of Malayan paddy soil’. The market mechanism and the ambitions of the political elites failed to account for these geological disadvantages, incentivising an expansion of paddy farming that now threatens both the national economy and the environment.  

Indian agriculture: small-scale mechanisation and new techniques

Secondly, the seasonality of agriculture and its intricate relationship with the broader environment do not warrant the simplistic market-led determination based on individual profitability. The lower application of agrochemicals specifically in India’s paddy agriculture is an ongoing process, orchestrated by the Indian state governments, and is not led by free interaction of market forces. By adopting Direct Seeded Rice (DSR) using small-scale machinery, which drills seeds directly into the soil rather than using traditional broadcasting or transplanting, farmers have reduced the water consumption by 15% to 20%, reduced methane emissions, and simultaneously freeing labour from the cultivation process. 

Furthermore, paddy farmers in India use small-scale weeding machines instead of weedicides, made possible by the DSR method. Unlike the broadcasting method predominantly practiced in Sri Lanka, the use of a seed driller ensures uniform spacing between the rice plants. This allows greater sunlight absorption, which enhances the yields and reduce the duration required for the crops to mature. Additionally, this uniform spacing between the plants facilitates mechanical weeding, a process that uproots weeds and integrates them back into the earth, thereby converting them into organic matter. 

These streamlined techniques hand in hand with alternate wet dry method of water use (which is now promoted by UNDP in Sri Lanka) have contributed to the increase in India’s paddy yield and lower costs. This shift effectively converts working capital previously spent on agrochemicals, water and labour (wages), into fixed capital in the form of small machinery. Consequently, Indian farmers have successfully replaced the use of agrochemicals with a combination of mechanical tools and a more sophisticated understanding of cultivation and environmental factors. Simultaneously, the labour freed by introducing new machinery into agriculture is reabsorbed into producing agricultural machinery. 

The author is a PhD candidate in Economics at the University of Sri Jayewardenepura and an Economics Consultant at the Law and Society Trust, Sri Lanka.