Growing pains

Growing pains are being heard from Kelaniya. Public Relations Minister Mervyn Silva has said tomatoes, green chillies, egg plants and ladies fingers will be prohibited from being sold in markets in Kelaniya from the end of April. His decision provoked irate comments from many and garnered such a high talking point that having a deeper look was deemed necessary.  

The plan is to have the banned vegetables home grown by the residents. Minister Silva had also informed officials to provide the necessary seeds and fertilisers at a reasonable price. Given the high cost of living the government has had to cling to short term measures such as imports to hold their head above the price escalation with little success but impracticality has hit a new high with Mervyn’s comments.

Kelaniya is a fast urbanising area with limited area for growing vegetables, yet they can be attempted with a few plots and some carefully planned urban agriculture practices. The main points of challenge exist in the fact that plants need tending and time to grow, leaving the question of whether people will be motivated to grow these veggies without opting to purchase them from outside Kelaniya. If people are too busy with their daily lives to engage in planting they will simply buy the produce from vendors outside Kelaniya and little will be done to mitigate their cost of living.

The other restriction is that tomatoes, green chillies and ladies fingers are crops that do not produce consistently. They take several months to grow and once they have flowered take a breathing space before growing again. This means that several sets of plants have to be grown with adequate time spacing to ensure that the home garden is sustainable. All this adds to a high level of impracticality.

Hitherto we considered the challenges of growing these crops but will it really have an impact? Common sense says not. Growing a few vegetables will not make a significant impact on the overall food inflation or “foodflation” as it is becoming known. Experts predict that the food crisis is here to stay until mid year and even government reports warn of shortages unless crops are grown in large scale very quickly to offset the losses caused by floods.

Since Sri Lanka is not self-sufficient in supplementary crops and vegetables the root of this shortage is a long term one. Even though the country has for decades focused the bulk of its resources on rice it has been at the cost of other crops that could have been at a higher level of growth. Moreover the price of non-food items has also caused inflation to increase and these supply shocks need to be ironed out at a national level as soon as possible if the people are to enjoy some measure of relief.  

Irresponsible and arbitrary decisions taken by government ministers only contribute to making the people more resentful about the situation and heightening their anger against policy makers. These pointless actions would neither compensate nor act as an incentive to the people who were affected by the floods to recover from their misfortune faster. Unfortunately in Sri Lanka we measure damage of a natural disaster based on the death toll, but in this instance it is the immeasurable suffering caused to people by the loss of livelihoods that will impact the entire country.

Under such circumstances the government ministers have a duty to lead from the front with practical, implementable and sustainable solutions rather than creating derision flashpoints.