Presidential Task Force to transform SL with green agriculture

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has appointed a top-level task force to transform the Government’s green agriculture agenda into fruition, thereby enhancing its contribution to sustainable socio-economic development.

The Presidential Task Force is chaired by Wild Holidays Chairman Vijith Welikala and comprises 14 members. They are Lalith Senevirathna, Biogenic Green Technology Research Institute Director S.K.B. Kasun Tharaka Amal, Hector Kobbekaduwa Agrarian Research and Training Institute Director Malinda Senevirathna, Climate Smart Agriculture Coordinator - Vavuniya and Mannar Districts, Eco-Friendly Farming Training Consultant R.B. Rasika Thusitha Kumara, Siyapatha International Education and Training Institute Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Dr. B.K.J. Kavantissa, Kangara Holdings Ltd. Samantha Fernando, Lanka Bio fertilisers Ltd. Samuditha Kumarasinghe, Green Force Agriculture Ltd. Ajith Randunu, Lanka Nature Power Ltd. N.M. Khalid, Bio Foods Ltd. Shammi Kirinde, Hyosung ONB Ltd. Nirmala Karewgoda, R.K.G. Bio Green Farm Chaminda Hettikankanamge, and Lorance’s Liquid Fertiliser Nishan de Silva.

President’s Additional Secretary Vernon Perera is the Secretary of the said Task Force.

The task force is responsible for formulating a systematic program for sustainable maintenance of green agriculture, identifying the organic fertiliser required for various crops and improving the quality of such fertiliser production, producing pesticides and weedicides locally, identifying methodologies and monitoring mechanisms for importing the limited scale possible shortages with high standards on the approval of the Sri Lanka Standards Institute in meeting the requirements through local production, enhancing the communication in transmitting to the public the health-related socio-economic benefits to be accrued from organic food production and consumption. 

It is also expected to enlist the active support of the public service in this process and to broaden the organic agriculture extension services at the field level.

Through an Extraordinary Gazette, the President has directed the Task Force for Green Agriculture to liaise with the Economic Revival and Poverty Alleviation Task Force and the Presidential Task Force for the Creation of a Green Sri Lanka with sustainable solutions for climate change.

A statement from President’s Media Office said it had been emphatically stated in the policy statement, ‘Vistas of Prosperity and Splendour,’ that action would be initiated to build a developed agricultural economy and to create an opportunity for the local and international consumer to obtain toxin-free agricultural products within the next decade, as well as to introduce eco-friendly crops.

It is the foremost objective of the Government to create an eco-friendly healthy green agriculture through the means of livelihood, thereby minimising the chemical waste materials being added to the soil and water. Attention has been drawn to the possibility of benefits being accrued locally, as well as internationally, through marching towards sustainable green agriculture by undertaking eco-friendly organic farming by the adaption of state-of-the-art technology.