Sixty-three year olf H.J.M Seneviratne, slices through yellowed paddy stems dried out by a drought that has destroyed over 95% of his crop and is threatening crisis-hit Sri Lanka’s summer rice harvest.
The island’s economy was crushed last year by its worst financial crisis in over seven decades, caused by a severe shortage of foreign exchange reserves that triggered widespread unrest and ousted its former president.
Helped by a $2.9 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Sri Lanka has slowly stabilised its economy since March, rebuilding its decimated reserves, moderating inflation and strengthening its currency.
But even before the country’s agriculture sector could recover from sky-rocketing prices of inputs from fertiliser to power, the rains failed.
“I’ve been a farmer for forty years but I’ve never experienced a harder time than this,” Seneviratne said, standing in the middle of a dusty field near Anamaduwa, a town in north western Sri Lanka, clutching a fistful of straw-like paddy stems with hollow rice kernels.
“We haven’t had enough rain since May. The harvest is so bad we don’t even have seed paddy for the next season.”
The southwest monsoon that farmers rely on for the Yala or summer harvest was scanty this year because of the El Nino weather pattern and the weather department estimates there will be no rains until October.
Typically, Seneviratne’s four acres yield about 4.5-6 tons of paddy for the summer harvest but this time he predicts he will get only about 150 kg. All but one of the eight water tanks, large ponds in which rainwater is collected for irrigation, in the area have dried out, destroying about 200 acres of paddy.
The paddy loss could be as much as 75,000 acres, according to Agriculture Minister Mahinda Amaraweera while other experts say full losses could be even higher as estimates are yet to be completed. Sri Lanka planted 1.3 million acres for the summer harvest, according to the Agriculture Ministry.
“We have lost at least 80,000 metric tons of paddy as per the latest data and it could be more,” said Buddhi Marambe, a professor of crop science at Sri Lanka’s Peradeniya University.
Last year, when the crop was decimated by a lack of fertiliser because of the economic crisis, the season produced 1.5 million tons of paddy.
The drought could reverse a recent trend of falling food prices, which dipped an annual 2.5% in July after rising 94% year-on-year last September.
Sri Lanka’s central bank warned last week that the dry weather coupled with higher global oil and commodity prices could also “weigh on expected growth in the near term,” as the island struggles to limit economic contraction to 2% this year after shrinking 7.8% in 2022.
Sri Lanka’s northern neighbour India is also expected to have the driest August in more than a century prompting it to restrict exports of certain categories of rice. Sri Lanka has previously imported rice from India to bridge production shortfalls.
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