Majority of the Sri Lankan families, including yours and mine, are facing an unprecedented food crisis. With the country’s acute malnutrition among children under 5 years, reaching 17%, Sri Lanka has secured the second highest malnutrition rate across South Asia, a position of shame and disappointment.
Many factors, including the Covid-19 pandemic, national issues such as poor governance and irrational policy making can be identified as major catalysts which have escalated this nutritional crisis.
Significant effects have been raised due to the continuous rising of food costs, which was reported as a 90.9 percent increase in July 2022 (Department of Census and Statistics – Sri Lanka). While a higher level of inflation is expected in the future, why has Sri Lanka’s inflation been so high and identification of the influence of the agricultural sector is of utmost importance.
In a broader perspective, Sri Lanka’s foreign currency shortage and bad credit reputation has resulted in continuous failures of purchasing and importing key agricultural imports such as fuel, fertilizer and pesticides. This in turn has led to almost halving of the gross agricultural production (BBC.com). While blames are being shared and thrown across, an important realization noted through this crisis was the heavy reliance on imports and unsustainable nature of Sri Lanka’s agricultural sector.
Although historically known to have produced enough rice to ship excess to Myanmar, today Sri Lanka is a recipient of rice donations from the same nation. There’s much to reflect and lament on where and what went wrong and even now it is not too late to take mitigatory actions.
Donations from friendly nations: Myanmar, China and India as well as global organizations such as the UN’s World Food Program play a vital role. Nevertheless, questions on their proper management and equivalent distribution exists in a major scale.
For short-term and long-term solutions, an in-depth analysis of the current and prevalent issues must be carried out and a systematic action plan must be implemented. This should be done while integrating the expert knowledge and advice of academics and researchers across Sri Lanka – frequently disregarded by all-knowing political factions.
Agriculture is of global importance and therefore, almost every day, a novel discovery inching us closer towards global food security, is being released. However, these require considerable investments and specialized training which is a heavy price to pay for a country already in crisis.
Therefore, search for feasible solutions that can be employed in a localized and short-term framework is of paramount importance.
1. Promoting urban farming. Farming in Sri Lanka has been concentrated in certain regions away from urbanization. Although it makes sense for large scale operations, small or medium scale farming within urban regions should be encouraged including individual households.
2. Improving existing infrastructure to facilitate easy transportation, distribution of agricultural products from farmer to consumer and minimizing mediator costs.
3. Reducing food wastage. Despite the ongoing crisis, food wastage by individuals and corporations is a significant problem. Focusing on demand vs. supply, and donation of excess daily produce can help feed many.
4. Providing specialized, ground-level support and guidance to farmers with available newest technologies and local discoveries.
5. Recruiting the private sector for aid, under the corporate social responsibility frameworks.
6. Raising public awareness of the ongoing crisis and creating a collective social impact via Scientific communication.
Although feasible solutions are available, without proper guidance or monitoring, it is difficult to achieve them. A national strategy with a clear set of objectives and goals is imperative if we are to overcome this crisis because, nutritional Crisis might not be your problem today, but it could be yours tomorrow.
References
http://www.statistics.gov.lk/
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-62990385
https://srilankabrief.org/sri-lankas-agricultural-scientific-community-predicts-substantial-yield-losses-in-agricultural-production-due-to-govts-new-policy/
Image courtesy
Featured image – https://srilankabrief.org/sri-lankas-agricultural-scientific-community-predicts-substantial-yield-losses-in-agricultural-production-due-to-govts-new-policy/