Garvin Karunaratne

My dabbling in agriculture in Sri Lanka, for eighteen long years as an administrative officer in agriculture tells me that August is always a dry month- a month for harvesting. February and August are dry months and the pattern of paddy cultivation had to be geared to that reality, which Mother Nature has decided, a situation over which we humans have no control. The more we disagree and try to fight it out, we will be the losers. Mother Nature has been kind to us to make downpours of rain on a regular basis to enable our crops boundless. We even did have a crop of cotton before 1958. In August the Weerawila Air was full of cotton pollen- a sign that it was a great harvest. Then somehow we gave up cultivating cotton and I took over all the cotton stores at Weerawila- they were very large ones, to store paddy. That was in 1958 when I covered the Southern Province.

It so happened that I have been at the helm of supplying water to paddy farmers in Anuradhapura in 1963 and 1964.. That happened because the Agrarian Services Department took over minor irrigation from the Government Agent in 1962. I worked as the Assistant Commissioner in charge of the Anuradhapura District. We had elected 296 cultivation committees and they handled paddy cultivation including the distribution of water. I thus speak with a great deal of experience in the actual process of distributing water to farmers in small tanks as well as in the larger track of the KalaWeva- Eppawela-Talawa area. I have also handled minor irrigation in the Kegalla, Kandy, and Nuwara Eliya Districts. In fact, it was I that presided over the Kanna Meetings of the Kalaweva-Eppawela-Talawa Tract involving paddy cultivation in over one hundred tanks in 1962 and 1963.

Today, in August 2023, a vast extent of 65,000 acres in Udawalave, is said to need water. The Ministry of Agriculture requires the supply, but it is said that if this amount of water is released, there will not be enough water for the supply of electricity. At the Cabinet level, it has been finally decided to provide water and it is being done at the moment.

There are also reports from the Anuradhapura District that some paddy lands are short of water. This August.. The tanks do not have water for the paddy crop that yet needs water.

All this tells me to point blank that this was due to late cultivation. Professor Buddhi Marambe, a learned luminary has said that farmers should start with the rains and not wait to start with the issue of water from irrigation schemes. This is very true.

Once a few years ago I spent a night in a room of the Large Devon in Kandy and from my window I saw paddy crops at the heenbandi stage, while alongside another farmer had a two weeks’ crop. That told me that paddy cultivation is in total chaos.

Our forefathers who planned the vast irrigation systems involving major and minor tanks knew this requirement of working with Mother Nature and we have been bequeathed a system of irrigation administration that has to be adhered to. This system was at first implemented by the GamSabha system which was abolished by the British in 1833. Subsequently, the distribution of water for paddy cultivation has been in charge of the Government Agents of the District. The system implemented includes a Kanna Meeting of all cultivators/owners to be held at the beginning of each season when depending on the availability of water in the tank in the Dry Zone the extent to be cultivated will be decided. The Government Agent appointed a Vel Vidane from the area to be in charge and this Vel Vidane held the Kanna Meetings and arrived at the decisions with the people when to clear the water canals, when to cultivate- in detail including dates to plough, to sow and harvest. Everyone had to abide and there was provision for anyone who failed to follow to be punished.

It so happened that when Minor irrigation functions were taken over by the Agrarian Services Department where I worked as an Assistant Commissioner the elected cultivation committees held the Kanna Meetings. This was done regularly. In my experience farmers did adhere to the decisions arrived at the Kanna Meetings.

In the areas where there were no irrigation tanks too the Kanna Meetings were held before the rains when decisions when to cultivate etc were decided.

The problem is that since the abolition of the Paddy Lands Act around 1978, the system of cultivation practices is not being followed. I quote from my book, NuwaraKalaviya (2021)

In the system under the Vel Vidanes in the days when the Government Agents handled and later when the cultivation committees elected under the Paddy Lands Act handled paddy cultivation there was a definite system where the farmers met at Kanna Meetings at the beginning of each season and decided when to cultivate, the extent to cultivate, what seed to use, when to harvest etc. Even fines were decided which were strictly enforced by the Courts. After the cultivation committees were disbanded the Yaya Representatives were ineffective. Now Kanna Meetings are not held systematically with the result that late cultivation is common and the harvest gets damaged by the oncoming rains.”

The Lankadeepa of 9/8/2023 details that in the case of Udawalawe, the Kanna Meeting held on 31/3/2023 decided that the farmers should cultivate only 6047 hectares, out of a total of 12,094 hectares, but farmers cultivated as much as 9777 hectares. This shows that the decisions at the Kanna Meeting are totally ignored. The decision to cultivate only 6047 acres would have been decided taking into consideration the available water. Increasing the extent by as much as fifty percent is actually courting trouble. This also shows that paddy cultivation today is in total chaos.

There are many reasons why there is late cultivation.

Gone are the days when all the farmers get together and start tilling the entire Yaya from one end to the other. In the Fifties they tilled thrice- it was called ketum, deketum and teketum. Thereafter they sowed seed. Now the men are no more to be found- Now everywhere it is tractors and tractors are difficult to find. In my days it was manual crop cutting. New harvesters have come in and it is a difficult task to find harvesters. This is a major cause for the delay. The Government has to step in with Tractor Stations that have tractors and harvestors, but right now paddy cultivation is in utter unimaginable chaos- far from the orderly cultivation which once in the Sixties enabled Sri Lanka to be self-sufficient. As the Senior Assistant Commissioner of Agrarian Services in 1965-67, covering entire Sri Lanka, and as the Additional Government Agent at Kegalla in 67-69, I was neck-deep involved in the craze to be self-sufficient. . We had a Prime Minister Mr Dudley Senanayake who never missed a Saturday and Sunday- every weekend he was in the field. My task was to greet him at Warakapola Rest House at nine in the morning and accompany him to meetings and paddy fields, speaking to farmers, assessing and making decisions for me to carry out and report back to him personally.

Those days we had many seed farms where a late cultivator can find a variety that will be quicker- a three-month crop rather than a four-month crop. Now many seed farms have been privatized and the Government has totally lost control via privatization.

Non-compliance with the system of holding Kanna Meetings and not adhering to the dates fixed result in delayed cultivation.

Further, in my days in Anuradhapura, I encouraged the cultivation committees to get down to use the tank beds in August to make tiles and actually a few of them did it. This increased the capacity of the tanks. In ancient times elephants were led into the tanks and the silt was led out through the lower sluice. This is a long-forgotten practice now. The tanks are now silted up. In 1958 I used to have a swim the Tissa tank regularly and beside the bund it was around twelve feet deep. Now the depth is a few feet. The tanks are the lifeblood of the Dry Zone and deserve close attention.

. In my words from NuwaraKalavia:

The rot set in when the Paddy Lands Act was abolished in the Seventies and the elected cultivation committees ceased to exist. There was a vacuum in irrigation administration and the farmers had to fend for themselves. Though latterly YayaPalakas were elected .. Kanna Meetings were not held properly. The tanks were not maintained; influential people even encroached onto the tanks, tank bed cultivation was common and as a result, the tanks got silted.”

In fact it is correct to state that NuwaraKalaviya is on death row, with no administration on the irrigation tanks. An easy remedy is to go back to the Vel Vidane System under the Government Agents and to ensure that there is orderly maintenance of the irrigation systems and cultivation. The Yayapalaka system is in total chaos.

The late cultivation of 65,000 acres in Udawalave leads us to the above analysis of facts which may perhaps reach the ears of authority before NuwaraKalaviya ceases to be our granary. In 2022 Sri Lanka imported 800,000 metric tons of rice. If Kanna Meetings are not properly held and decisions adhered to it will be impossible to avoid imports. Mind you, Sri Lanka in 1970 was self-sufficient in rice production. The answer lies in bringing back the effective cultivation administration system we once had with Vel Vidanes under the Government Agents before we perhaps face starvation.

Garvin Karunaratne