• Vegetable production dependent on imported hybrid seeds: Farmers

• Seeds that could be manufactured locally will not be imported: Aluthgamage

By Maheesha Mudugamuwa   Amidst continuous protests by farmers over the lack of fertiliser, their woes have been further exacerbated due to the increase in seed prices. According to agriculture statistics, about 70% of current local vegetable farming in Sri Lanka is based on imported hybrid seeds, and most of the seeds of upcountry vegetables including cabbage, carrots, leeks, beetroot, beans, tomatoes, capsicum, cauliflower, and potatoes as well as low-country vegetables including pumpkin, cucumber, okra, brinjal, leafy vegetables, and long beans are imported. “The entire vegetable production in the country is dependent on imported hybrid seeds and the prices are increasing annually. The farmers are facing severe issues at present, as they cannot afford the vegetable seeds due to the high prices. Also, a new issue has now erupted due to the complete ban imposed by the Government on chemical fertiliser, pesticides, and weedicides,” All Island Farmers’ Federation (AIFF) National Organiser Namal Karunaratne said. He told The Sunday Morning that there were several mafias operating in the local agriculture sector and seeds have now become such a profitable mafia, as the country’s entire agriculture sector is now depending on the quality of imported seeds. “Before chemical-based cultivation was introduced to Sri Lanka, farmers engaged in traditional cultivation mechanisms and the seed requirement was fulfilled by their own crops. But at present, since no quality second-generation seeds are being produced by the current seeds cultivated, the farmers have to depend on imported seeds for each and every time they are cultivating,” Karunaratne explained. Highlighting the high prices, he stressed that just 15 g of radish seeds cost Rs. 660 at present. “Earlier, it was Rs. 340 and it has suddenly doubled during a short period of time,” he added. Likewise, the cost of 1 kg of papaya is now around Rs. 800 in the local market, Karunaratne stressed. After the establishment of the Department of Agriculture under British Law in 1912, botanists working at the Central Agricultural Research Institute became involved in the breeding and producing important seeds as food crops. An organised seed field was established under the Department of Agriculture in around 1950 and until about 1980, the Department of Agriculture was the main supplier of seeds in Sri Lanka. Since 1984, the private sector had entered into seed importation and production in Sri Lanka and as a result, the Seed Act No. 22 of 2003 was promulgated for the successful implementation of the State Policy on Seeds and Planting Materials, formulated under the Ministry of Agriculture, Lands, and Forests in March 1997 with the objective of mitigating the problems caused by the rapid increase in seed production and imports.   No gazette Nevertheless, as revealed in the report issued by the National Audit Office (NAO), even though the State Policy on Seeds and Planting Materials has been mentioned as the Seed Policy in 1997, but to date has not been gazetted. A National Seed Council (NSC) was established under Section 4 of Part II of the Seed Act to carry out the functions specified in the Seed Act. However, the report revealed that the NSC met for the first time on 29 November 2017, 14 years after the enactment of the Seed Act, and then met only three times during the period up to 31 December 2019. “The decision to import seeds was taken to enhance the local cultivations. But the authorities should have developed local seeds instead of importing seeds from multinational companies. We had the technology and even now, we are developing seeds locally, but they were not available to farmers,” AIFF National Organiser Karunaratne stressed. According to budget estimates of the Ministry of Agriculture for the years 2016 and 2017, it was expected to reduce the importation of vegetables and other crops by one-third, but data obtained by Sri Lanka Customs observed that the importation of relevant vegetable seeds had not decreased. It is further revealed that the Department of Agriculture had imposed maximum import restrictions only on bean seeds when issuing vegetable seed import licenses and, in fact, Sri Lanka Customs and the Department of Agriculture had not had data on the number of seeds imported from each vegetable.   Cost of seed imports Agriculture statistics revealed that a total of 1,193,807 kg of seeds have been imported by spending Rs. 6,567 million from 2015 to 2019. Vegetable seeds are produced in three stages, and the seed varieties identified at the research level are the breeder seeds, and the seeds obtained by multiplication are the basic seeds. Standard seeds are those obtained by multiplying the basic seeds for large-scale cultivation. Of these seeds, the Department of Agriculture has the monopoly power to produce breeder seeds identified at the research level. According to the report, maximum restrictions were imposed only on the import of bean seeds and quantities of 187.1 MT, 108.6 MT, and 163 MT were allowed to be imported from 2017 to 2019, respectively. As such, licenses had been issued for the importation of 464 MT, 359 MT, and 459 MT of the above 11 types of vegetables in the three years 2017, 2018, and 2019, respectively. Meanwhile, the Horticultural Crop Research and Development Centre (HORTI) has introduced 20 varieties of eight types of vegetables under the new hybrid and open pollinated variety development and basic seed production project implemented during the period from 2016 to 2019, with a total cost of Rs. 56.7 million. Accordingly, 17 varieties including 12 varieties of eight vegetables introduced under the aforementioned project were introduced during the period from 2011 to 2019. However, according to the research report published in 2018 by Hector Kobbekaduwa Agrarian Research and Training Institute (HARTI), although the Government has spent a large amount of money annually on the promotion of the local seed industry, there is a 70% probability to choose imported hybrid varieties by local vegetable farmers. According to the letter No. A.D/2/29/A, dated 13 February 2020, the Director General of Agriculture has identified several reasons for the non-popularity of local seeds among farmers, including the lack of suitable places to set up shops covering the Jaffna and Ratnapura Districts. At present, there are 34 outlets islandwide that have difficulty in distributing seeds in the proper season due to the lack of adequate outlets, transport facilities, and officers for marketing and promotion. The existence of more demand for the imported hybrid seeds with quantitatively higher yields than for high-quality local seed varieties and to provide attractive packages through the private sector for them, lack of adequate cool and general storage facilities, and inability to produce and process seeds for the season due to shortage of manpower and machinery for the farms were also among the reasons identified by the Department.   Farmers lament Meanwhile, highlighting the issues faced by farmers, Karunaratne stressed that farmers are now being affected by not one but a myriad of questions including the lack of fertiliser, high prices of seeds, and the recently increased fuel prices. “Many farmers have gone away from cultivations and as a result, there would definitely be a severe shortage of vegetable in the local market,” he said, adding that the vegetables were short-term crops and cultivated for a period of around 35 days, and when it doesn’t get the adequate amounts of fertiliser due to the ban on chemical fertiliser, the harvest reduces.  “The seeds have been developed to match with chemical fertiliser and not for organic fertiliser. Therefore, the farmers are experiencing a loss of expected crop yield last month and therefore, many farmers have stopped farming vegetables,” he stressed. As a result, the country would be experiencing a severe shortage of vegetables in the coming months, unless the authorities come up with a proper solution, either to introduce organic fertiliser-based seeds or re-introduced chemical fertilisers, Karunaratne added. Responding to the issues associated with the importation of seeds, Minister of Agriculture Mahindananda Aluthgamage said that measures would be taken to suspend the importation of seeds that could be produced locally. Meanwhile, Sri Lanka has incurred a loss of Rs. 38 million during the period from 2014 to 2019 due to insufficient research, inaccurate forecasts of seed quantities, failure to produce seeds as required, and problems in seed storage procedures, a recent audit report released by the NAO has revealed. In addition, the country has spent a total of Rs. 1,491.6 million to import vegetable seeds in 2019 which, as highlighted by the NAO, is a 35% increase compared to that of 2015, which was Rs. Rs. 962.7 million. The report highlighted that the quantity of imported seeds has decreased by 13% in 2019, but the cost of seed imports has increased by 55% when compared to 2015. Accordingly, it is further revealed that the cost of imported vegetable seeds has increased by 76% per kilogramme during the period from 2015 to 2019. Attempts to contact Director General of Agriculture W.M.M.B. Weerasekera were futile.