DEVELOPMENT-SRI LANKA: Organic Farming Revives Barren Land

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Renuka Senanayake GALAHA, Sri Lanka, Jul 24 2000 (IPS) - Standing amid the knee-high, lush vegetable crop, Kiribanda points to similar farm plots around him in this hamlet in the hills some 70 km north of the Sri Lankan capital.

“This land was barren and unyielding. There were only a few stunted tea bushes on the hillside when we came here,” he says.

Kiribanda, along with scores of once poor peasants, now produces rich harvests of beet root, snake gourds, cabbage, spices and other vegetables. He earned 60,000 rupees (nearly 900 U.S. dollars) from sales last year and is confident that his produce will fetch 90,000 rupees this year.

All this costs him little. Unlike entrepreneur farmers elsewhere, those in Galaha do not buy costly fertilisers and pesticides for their fields.

It is because they decided not to use chemical nutrients and pest killers that the once harsh terrain now yields bountiful harvests, explains Ranjith de Silva, who brought chemicals-free farming to this area two decades ago.

The seven-hectare farm and training centre run by his non- governmental organisation (NGO), Gemi Seva Sevana (GSS) in Galaha has become a model for organic agriculture in Sri Lanka.

“We use only organic manure. Any kind of chemical is banned. The small farmers linked to us do the same. We produce our own compost and the raw material is freely available,” says de Silva pointing to compost heaps dotting the farmland.

“If I buy chemicals on loans I might end up committing suicide like some farmers in the country,” says Kiribanda. In recent years, dozens of farmers have killed themselves on being unable to pay back large loans taken for fertilisers and pesticides.

When de Silva first came here in the 1970s, the area was an abandoned tea plantation. The mountain slopes were parched, covered with a few dried tea bushes. The estate farmers had left for other jobs. Over a century of tea cultivation for export had sucked all nutrients out of the soil, he explains.

However, the use of organic manure over the years has restored fertility to the land. Unlike chemicals that progressively deplete nutrients, the natural fertilisers keep on enriching the soil, he says.

Indeed, production costs today are half of what they were a decade ago and Kiribanda no longer spreads manure over the entire vegetable plot.

The fertiliser comes from cattle and goat waste that yields about 10 tonnes of organic manure every month. Farmers also use ‘worm wash’ that is made by putting goat dung, leaves and earthworms in a barrel, with a tap at the bottom. Water is poured into the barrel every day and it seeps through the layers of waste and worms, producing the manure.

“The worm wash is a fine fertiliser. The vegetables respond really well and it is very easy to produce,” says Kiribanda.

“Organic tea farmers are now encouraged to use more goat dung as it gives the plants enough copper and zinc,” says Shantha, an agriculture extension officer at the centre.

Instead of pesticides, organic farmers like Kiribanda spray pounded Khomba (Margosa) seeds mixed with water on the crop. One kilogramme of seed powder is mixed in 20 litres of water. A kilo of seeds costs only 12 rupees. They also rely on birds and pest-eating insects.

According to de Silva, current farming practices in Sri Lanka are reducing farm yields and killing off bio-diversity in the Indian Ocean island nation.

The farm is helping save Sri Lanka’s rich bio-diversity. Sri Lanka has 2,800 recorded varieties of rice seeds. De Silva’s group is conserving 124 varieties of rice seeds along with other seeds.

In 1998, Sri Lankan farmers used an estimated 537,000 tonnes of fertiliser. Nearly a third of this was sprayed on tea plantations. According to the Registrar of Pesticides, farmers used 5,860 tonnes of agro-chemicals to control weeds, insects and fungus in that year.

“The modern method does not have a give-and-take policy. The land continues to demand more and more chemicals, whereas in organic agriculture the land regenerates and the amount of manure required gradually lessens,” says de Silva.

In 1999, the farmers of Gemi Seva Sevana produced 6,937 kg of organic tea, of which 1,450 kg was exported. They sold 6,168kg of vegetables in the local market.

“We now take our, tea, spices, seeds, vegetables and organic manure to Colombo where there is great demand and the sales are gradually rising,” says de Silva.

Some 151 tea farmers are producing organic tea for export for the past three years. Their produce is sold mainly to Switzerland with the help of the Swiss Association for International Cooperation.

De Silva’s group keeps meticulous records to ensure a high quality product that meets international standards. However, this involves regular monitoring, testing, inspection and certification, which is very costly.

The farmers have also set up 47 savings groups of five members each, each that have accumulated nearly 800,000 rupees (about 11,000 dollars). A farmer can borrow up to 20,000 rupees for buying cattle, seeds or building farm sheds.

His organisation has also conducted scores of training sessions for hundreds of farmers in other parts of the country. In February this year, farmers using similar methods in Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan, visited the farm.