AGRICULTURE-SRI LANKA: Wonder Soya Crop Gives Hope to Poor Farmers

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

DAMBULLA, Sri Lanka, Jun 6 2000 (IPS) - In one of the luscious green fields that cover large areas of this district, Herath-hamige Vallihami is preparing to harvest the ripened soyabean crop with the help of her two grandchildren.

Vallihami’s husband died of cancer two years ago. She lost her son-in-law to the violent ethnic war troubling the Indian Ocean island nation for nearly two decades. Her daughter killed herself soon after.

“It’s a hard life, but soya brings us slightly better returns than other crops,” she says. The family eats only rice and vegetables and cannot afford meat or eggs.

Dozens of other peasants in Dambulla, some 150 km northeast of the capital city Colombo, are now mixing the traditional rice crop with soyabean for similar reasons.

Thanks to the efforts of a single agribusiness company, soyabean could one day become the staple food after rice, and reduce dependence on flour imports from the United States.

“I hope so,” laughs Mohan Ratwatte, production director at Plenty Canada Foods (Pvt) Ltd, Sri Lanka’s only mass producer of soyabean and soya-based products.

The company says it got involved in the soya industry in 1996 more out of a sense of social commitment than business.

“Yes, there is a certain element of profitability in any business but I believe the objective of the directors of the group was to get involved in a food product aimed at the middle and lower middle classes,” he says.

“We wanted to provide good, natural products for our people from indigenous sources instead of reliance on imported food,” he adds.

Most of the 2,000-odd soya farmers across the north central region have a common story to tell — poverty, failed crops, family problems, and young men getting embroiled in the ethnic violence.

Vallihami’s son is in the army, battling Tamil Tiger rebels, while another farmer Suduhami Chandralatha’s 18-year old son wants to join up.

“He wants to join the Navy because there are no others jobs and farming is not a lucrative profession. We are very poor,” she says, adding that they were now pinning their hopes on soya production.

The farmers find soya growing easier and less strenuous as the fields require manure just twice during the season. Soya is a three-month crop.

In 1996, Ratwatte’s firm acquired Plenty Canada Foods, a Canadian-based NGO propagating soya as a cholesterol-free, high protein food. It has since produced a range of soya-based products that are fast becoming popular with Sri Lankans.

Soyabean production was first introduced in 1992 by the Canadian firm in small plots in the dry zone areas in Dambulla. The company went on to make soya oil and two protein-based foods on a small scale at its factory in the central hill town of Pallekelle.

“We want to popularise soya not only because of its nutritional content but also because it is the cheapest form of protein for our people,” says Ratwatte. Meats are still the main source of protein in the country, but too expensive for most people.

Farmer Punchirala Jayaratne used to grow a mix of chili and rice on his one hectare plot in Meegaswewa, some 50 km off Dambulla, but switched to soyabean and rice when told production costs were much less and returns higher.

“Soya is easier to farm than paddy and needs less field attention as long as the ground is wet and the seed is good,” he explains, while working on his field. His income has gone up by one and a half times since he started harvesting soyabean three years ago.

According to Jayantha Dharmasiri, extension officer at Plenty Canada’s field head office in Mada-atugama near Dambulla, the crop is grown in some 700 hectares and becoming popular with farmers.

The company buys seeds from some farmer plots at about 35 rupees (about half a U.S. dollar) for one kilogramme. “We test the plot and take only good quality seeds,” says Dharmasiri, adding the seeds are then given free to the farmers.

The company also provides other farm inputs like fertiliser on credit and loans for other inputs.

Plenty Canada uses corn, green gram, kurakkan (a form of lentil) and rice in all its soya-based products. The company’s flagship product is Samaposha, a cereal sold in 200 gramme packs and meant for children over two years old, pregnant women, sportsmen and old people because of its high nutrition content.

Sales are targeted to reach 800,000 packs the end of the year. “This is a very popular product,” says Ratwatte. Samaposha is a combination of 50 percent maize, 30 percent soya, 10 percent each of rice and green gram, all fortified with vitamins.

According to company officials, medical research shows that soya, apart from being cholesterol-free, also reduces risk of cancers. The company’s soya-based flour is popular with diabetic patients.

The company still promotes products popularised by the Canadians like a pro-soya powder which could be used as a coconut milk substitute for curries, soya meat and soya oil. But it is staking its future on a range of easy-to-eat foods like Samaposha, soya cookies, soya soup and soya wheat noodles.

It is also working on developing a soya breakfast cereal that it says would equal in quality to the global Kellogg’s brand, but much cheaper. “All our foods come from 99.9 percent local inputs with only the fortified vitamin content from abroad,” says Ratwatte.

Plenty Canada is backed by government food research agencies like the Institute of Food Technology and the Food Research Institute. The University of Peradeniya’s farm research division developed Innoculum, a crystal-like organic substance used to increase the nitrogen content in soya fields. Previously, this was imported from Thailand.