Vignettes from Sri Lanka's cloud country

Encounters with organic farming in Sri Lanka

There is widespread recognition today of the land and food crisis in Sri Lanka, in both plantations and in the smallholder food-producing sectors. Lands are being degraded and poisoned, while devastating floods and periodic droughts take a heavy toll on food security. The government’s response has been to do more of the same – continue to stoke the country’s dependence on highly subsidized agro-chemicals and continue to cold shoulder alternatives.

But the country also has a strong organic ‘movement’ that advocates a poison-free path to food security while pushing for equity and sustainability in agriculture policy.

This loose coalition of interconnected groups draws its inspiration from traditional farming practices -- home gardens for instance; from growing forests for economic and ecological gain, analog forestry, for example; and includes ‘imported’ ideas, such as ‘zero-budget farming’ borrowed from India. 

Tea in the central highlands: This organic tea estate in central highlands in Uva province uses phytoremediation, using plants to decontaminate water and soil from agro-chemicals. (Photo: Aditya Batra)

Sri Lanka’s green gold

About 221,000 hectares, or four per cent of Sri Lanka is covered in tea plantations, and the industry employs close to one million people directly or indirectly. From 1790 till about the 1860s, Sri Lanka was known for its coffee; British planters switched to tea – James Taylor’s Loolecondera tea estate in Kandy was among the first -- after a devastating bout of coffee rust and blight in the mid-1850s.

Data from the Tea Board shows organic tea accounts for only 2 million kgs of the 30 million kgs of tea that Sri Lanka exports each year. Before the tea estates were nationalized in the 1970s, all plantations were in private hands. Post the land-redistribution in the 1970s, about 60 per cent of the country’s tea is produced by small farmers. The best tea in the country is produced in Dimbule, in Uva province. The prime season for plucking is in June to August when the dry, cold wind, Sri Lanka’s version of the Sirocco, blows through these central highlands.

The full leaf tea from the low-country (below 1500 feet in altitude), is mostly exported to the Middle East; Arabs love the full leaf flavour. Tea from the mid-country (up to 3000 feet) is of medium quality, while the up-country teas, such as here in Uva Province, produce the best grades of black teas, chiefly Orange Pekoe, and Broken Orange Pekoe. Yields in Sri Lanka tea estates are low, 1200 kg per hectare, as compared to tea estates in Kenya that easily produce 3000 kg per hectare.