COLOMBO: Sri Lanka wants farmers to plant more rice as part of plans to avert a severe food shortage, a top official said on Tuesday , as experts warned of a 50 per cent drop in production that would worsen the impact of its already-severe financial crisis.
Sri Lanka is in the throes of its worst such crisis in more than seven decades. The island of 22 million people has run out of foreign exchange reserves and is unable to pay for critical imports including fuel, food and medicine. “It is clear the food situation is becoming worse. We request all farmers to step into their fields in the next five to ten days and cultivate paddy,” Agriculture Minister Mahinda Amaraweera told a press conference on Tuesday.
Sri Lanka’s new prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has warned of a severe food shortage by August and estimates US$600 million will be needed to import fertliser, which the country is struggling to raise. Most fertliser will arrive too late for the next cultivation cycle that usually kicks off in early June, a group of agriculture experts have warned. In the next two seasons, sufficient quantities of fertiliser will not be available to fulfill the nutrient requirements of any of the major crops of rice, tea and maize.
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