The farmer faces many hurdles- this takes the cake – every nut must conform

Delivering King Coconuts to shops today, instead of the club!

Amongst the many products I grow and market, my single largest revenue earner as noted before is from the sale of King Coconuts, and my largest individual customer was the Golf Club in Colombo, to which the land in Godagama has been supplying King Coconuts for over 10 years. We have had to make extra efforts to supply them with this twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays, averaging 500 a week.

I missed my Monday delivery to them as the man who climbs the tree and cuts them did not turn up despite a search for him all over area on Monday, and was only able to track him on Tuesday. So I had 150 specially cut as early as possible that morning and I personally took it to the club that day, not a short drive away, for a special delivery.

I was told that the Chef had to be called to pass the sizes of the nuts and once he came he said he could only take two bunches as the others were smaller than the mandated sizes. I then learnt that a member of the club had hauled both the chef and the manager in charge of ordering, and given them a talking to, saying the club’s king coconuts were too small as compared with those that appear for sale on the roadside.

I had no option but to tell them that we have made every effort to bring fresh King Coconuts, direct from our property and these were about two hours from plucking, and that I was not willing to cut my king coconuts and select those that adhere to a dimension that is stipulated and then bring only them to the Club. They either take what I have or not take any, as they just cannot pick and chose, much like in a super market, as that is another purchase, where the source cannot be guaranteed, and they are only purchasing on size with no other guarantees. I promptly took all the king coconuts and sold them on the road side within minutes of leaving the club, breathing a sigh of relief that I will no longer be stressed out to ensure the plucker comes twice a week to satisfy this want.

For all the trouble of plucking, where the plucker gets Rs2 for each nut, the transport, labor and my effort I get Rs15 a nut from the Club. I get Rs20 for my home delivery ones, admittedly at a lower volume and I was not going to give the customers smaller sizes for more money reserving the larger ones for a lower unit price at the club.

Anyone who grows King Coconuts will know, that in a 100 trees, the sizes of the nuts vary substantially, and some bunches can be as small as 5 and others as large as 35. In addition, sometimes the smaller nuts are deceptive, having more water than the larger nuts, and then due to rainfall and seasonal variations there are different sizes of nuts on the same tree at different times of the year. So if they want to source it from one location, that is the variation they have to accept, as I cannot then dispose of the smaller nuts elsewhere. Additionally trees go into hibernation sometimes and while the club requires a standard level of supply, I have to limit my supply to others due to lower harvest.

I consoled myself with the thought that the person complaining about the nuts was a 25ml shot drinker who thinks King coconuts are made to exact standards, a typical attitude of a townie. Nevertheless I still lost a significant customer. An added risk of farming!!

Tools of the trade

I went to one of my neighbors in Rotawewa, Minneriya where I also collect fresh forest Bees Honey, to pluck oranges as they are now ripe to be plucked. He was getting ready to leave his lovely ranch full of fruit trees, to go to his fields. The picture shows, his mammoty, his water bottle and hat, the basics he needs in his field. He is of the old school and still rides his bicycle, now the young ones ride their motorcycles to the field, with basically the same extras!

The exasperating saga continues. All I want is increased output farmers please!

My pleas just fall on deaf ears, when my mission as well as this blog is to get our growers to grow more, better, more efficient and so to reduce agri-produce costs to the consumer. The latest example is over these few days. I was caught in the depression in the Bay Bengal! Which resulted in some unusual and excessive rain over the Avurudhu period.

Taking advantage of this to my benefit, I had my whole field ploughed up as it had been less than a month from the past harvest. I would have preferred to use the deep plough which I used last time, but as the boy I engaged to do this wanted out quick, I had to use the rotary instead, and while the ground was wet had it completely turned over so all the “ipanalla” or uncut part of the paddy plant and the straw would be mulched into the soil and get a chance to deteriorate to form some good soil conditioning and improve fertility.

This means that when I get the water from the Minneriya tank for cultivation on May 10th I will have already taken the first steps in the soil and field preparation. Without water on the fields it is difficult to do and this was an opportunistic moment. Remember I have barely been a paddy farmer for 3 years, and most of my neighbors are lifers. They concurred with my efforts and when I asked them why they did not also follow, they just shrugged their shoulders in SL fashion and smiled. They are just too lazy, thinking more of the drinking and games of Avurudhu. They have the money for the diesel, the tractors and the expertise themselves. I hired a boy to work the tractor as I was alone.

It boggles the mind that the average Joe in SL does not seize the moment to improve his return, and just follows time honored traditions slavishly. “It is unheard of in these parts to plough the fields in preparation prior to Avurudhu!” What absolute crap I ever heard. “pardon my Ffrench!”. Tell me how I can I even attempt to make a difference with attitudes like this. I know I am always called a fool on my blogs, saying that the Sinhalaya is one who only gets off his backside only if he desperately needs something, and then only if he cannot steal it will he then work for it!

I cannot go on accepting such euphemisms describing my countrymen with a straight face when there really is a job to be done. All those Sri Lankans overseas, namely those of you who have been frustrated by the inner workings of the SL mindset and have decided to go to sunnier climes in search of both being more productive in your host or adopted land, think for a moment. We have lost your talent and are left with the rest.

How can we get you back? We need you! I cannot do it alone. It is a fight we must win, otherwise don’t even brag about the motherland you left behind and how good the “good ol days were” and how bad it now is. When you leave it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and when you return we can change it. Who said it is easy, but take some time read my blog share my frustrations and my hopes and don’t forget the sacrifices I have made. It is still a noble cause, and look ahead to your own future and that of your children if there is no Sri Lanka to brag about, but a basket case of inebriated louts living off charity and someone else’s gravy train. You may as well disown your heritage in that case. We can turn it round. It is just a mental thing, a moral boost and hope in our future.

The 80/20 principle as it applies to agriculture

In my previous entry where I stressed the need for greater efficiency and productivity in Agriculture, one of the comments I received was on the 80/20 principle. I agree that even in this context the principle applies and the question is from which point to which would it move to affect the efficiencies I envisage.

To put it in perspective lets say that there are 200 farmers producing output of 100units costing 100 and for a revenue of 100. This is a case of average subsistence breakeven farming, overwhelmingly the case today. I expect in 10 years, those 200 farmers to drop to 100 as very few young people are going into agriculture, but I would like to see them produce a cumulative output of 200units costing 100 for revenue of 150.

Doing the math we are looking at a 400% increase in the average production per farmer. This will make farm incomes more viable. As you can see income per farmer is 3 times higher if we assume a price reduction on average of 25%. I also fairly make the assumption that to achieve a fourfold productivity increase his costs will also double giving him a profit margin from break even earlier to 33% of Revenue.

These are all achievable targets and following discussions will go into all the areas that require measures to reach this goal. The skewing of the rule referred to above will now change from 30% producing 80% of a pot called 100, where 10% will produce 80% of a pot called 200. This is as numbers dwindle and productivity of the large units surge by much higher proportions when economies of scale and mechanization take place to reduce unit costs many fold.

I use the analogy often where one farmer in California farms a 3000acre paddy field, which is fully mechanized and in Sri Lanka over 3000 farmers work the same acreage for a lower yield. No wonder the Californian rice is produced at a lower cost than ours, and that farmer can still earn 1000 times what our farmer earns.

Now that we have a labor shortage in the rural areas, we should not feel that we must still hang on to old ideas to give employment as most income in the rural areas is from the service sector, be it security forces, education, state sector or the retail sector. 80% of those who have land in the rural areas don’t even produce enough rice to feed their immediate family, so apart from encouraging organic home gardens, to increase the nation’s output, there is no rational reason anymore to ask them to break their backs to increase output more than what is reasonable given the resources they have access to.

Needless to say when we double our National output we will have surplus to export to niche markets in both the Maldives and the Middle East. They now amount to small quantities of exceptional quality goods that have a higher value added factor. We cannot supply all the requirements of the export agricultural sector which certainly has a lot more room for growth, and if the examples of some of our niche market agricultural exporters are anything to go by, there is much we can do without brushing into each others markets, as even they face severe product shortages for export.

What is the secret to productivity increases in agriculture?

The main purpose of this site is to make a stab at getting the reader to understand some of the issues associated with the methods of agriculture adopted in Sri Lanka, understand why our productivity in this sector is one of the lowest in the world, and suggest with my current experience, ways at improving it. I firmly believe we can produce twice the output we currently do with little extra effort.

The main reason I believe is structural, based on a flawed land distribution policy. We are still continuing to distribute land to supposedly landless peasants, some good land, some not so good, all in the interests of electoral gains and not in the interests of preserving forests, or improving productivity of existing planted or cleared land. Does it not surprise you how much unutilized land we have in the country? I don’t mean cutting one more inch of the fast dwindling forest.

From my limited foray into agriculture and my extensive traveling overseas, I can assure those who don’t already know that we have such a blessed land, full of agricultural promise, where seeds planted by birds seem to feed us as much as that planted by man.

In www.rajaratarala.blogspot.com I commented on my Kotiyagala visit this week. 150+ farmers, none of whom are landless, had been given 300+ acres of scrub, previously stripped forest for agricultural use over 8 years ago. No one used it, ostensibly because there was no water supply. They were waiting for the state to provide the infrastructure. The company I represent fenced in the land, built the roads to each allotment, dug wells and dams to store water in resulting small tanks. They guaranteed a minimum price for the local varieties of papaya at 50% above the market rate, and despite the over Rs10M sunk have not got more than 20% of the families to join us in the project.

I can honestly say that if I was loaned just half that amount and given the land I would have engaged the most productive workers of the village, with suitable incentives and have the whole acreage completely planted. In my example 20 of the most enterprising households will be well compensated and have a good living while the rest just look on.

We are stuck because we have no legal way of using the uncultivated land given to the families who have not planted and give it to those who want to plant. This is highly productive very good soil. In this example we must understand we should not equally divide. This is not communism. We must give to those who can grow and take away from those who cannot, A productive farmer is stuck as he is restricted to a small allotment, and cannot increase his holding unless he has access to considerable capital to buy land. Land laws prevent those not cultivating to lease to those who want in fear that their land may be taken by them under the squatters’ rights.

I am confident that we have excellent farmers whose potential we have not tapped to the hilt, because land ownership is fraught with envy and frowned upon. Let us identify our Govi Rajas and loan them what they want, and see them prosper, as only then will the nation prosper, increase production, and reduce both unit costs and market prices.

Paddy Harvesting in Polonnaruwa

These images show how things have changed in such a short space of time in rural Sri Lanka. Last season saw a sprinkling of Combine Harvesters, but this season has seen a complete takeover by them. The owners, finance the purchase of these Chinese build machines, from a leasing company hoping to completely pay for it in four seasons or two years.

I have seen so many of these around this week, that I wonder how much business each person will get in numbers of properties to harvest. I will not recommend anyone to buy these as they will not be able to make it profitable with only the Chinese manufacturer and the local agent along with the finance company transferring wealth from the village to the financiers and China.

It is great to see my hectare getting cut, threshed and bagged in less than 150 minutes, something that usually takes days. It cost me Rs22,500 and if I had used manual labor to cut the paddy it would have cost me more at today's wage rate.

I am not complaining, and I was watching the proceedings with interest. We can now have the paddy bagged for each field if we want, and especially, as different fields have different levels of maturity, those that are more green can be separated and dried as required, something we could not do in the past.


The one requirement for these machines is that the field cannot be waterlogged when cutting, as the combine running on rubber tracks can get stuck due to its 2,800kg weight.

The Era of the Combine Harvester has finally come to Polonnaruwa

The sight of four combine harvesters cutting and threshing the paddy in a small field this evening brings to light both the best and worst of Sri Lankan agriculture. Hitherto the most sophisticated tool was the Tsunami, a machine that threshed and separated into a bagging the cut paddy, which was what I used last season for my paddy. It was introduced into general use three years ago and now that has been superceded by the Kubota combine harvester that runs on a track and scoops up even fallen paddy and then cuts and threshes it and delivers the paddy into bags, much the same way the combines in the US harvest wheat.

I would first like to note that this season’s daily wage to cut paddy has risen to an astronomical 700 from 450 last season. Obviously people here aren’t even aware there is a world wide recession!! Anyway the cost of a cutting a one acre field is now Rs8000. It does not make any sense now to use manual labor as they have priced themselves out. It costs Rs10,000 per acre on the Combine which cuts and threshes and works out less than manual cutting and using the thresher once the paddy is collected in one place.

What was wrong with the site I saw was that four different people have bought 4 machines on a lease and they are working different people’s paddy land in the same large field. There is considerable duplication and waste. In the US one machine would be sufficient and so would it here, but the fields are divided into many plots owned by many farmers who have put many different varieties of rice thereby necessitating the current predicament of inefficient use of scarce resources and thereby increase the cost of productions significantly.

One wonders if this machine like the other one will also be superceded by more efficient machines, where the purchaser will find that his machine becomes obsolete before he has made his final payment on the machine. Such are the risks and vagaries of this business, where little thought goes into the all the real costs of production leaving many small farmers to eke out an existence with the providers of capital now replacing the providers of scarce labor.

I have my fields cut and threshed tomorrow by one of these combines and when I see it in operation for the first time at close proximity I am hoping to report on the process, hopefully with some photos.

Till then I leave you to contemplate what next in the scheme of agricultural innovation, and improved efficiency in paddy production. It is Japan as the supplier of the machine and the banks that are the suppliers of the lease terms that appear to me to be the major beneficiaries of this change but it is the farmer who has by demanding a larger wage for cutting who has actually cut his own self out of this participation and share of the costs of production. It really means, think about this statement logically, the role of the peasant farmer is now on its way out whatever you think about the pros and cons of the new era.

We just have to grow up to realize the consumer will get cheap rice with fewer farmers!!