Agricultural researcher who dared to leave the heavily trodden path
Dr. Handawela has written an absorbing and thought- provoking book on a subject that is very familiar and dear to him, Dry Zone farming. This is not the usual mundane description of what is there for every discerning person to see. It is an intuitive analysis of what most intellectuals studying our Dry Zone have failed to observe. He has been a detective more than a researcher in that he has unearthed clues others failed to see. He has gone beyond plodding through books and papers written by regular researchers. It is only by leaving the heavily trodden path that one can see a different perspective but this has to be done by those who have a highly sensitive feeling for alternative perceptions.
He admits that for most of his professional career as an agricultural researcher in Government service, he had been blinkered like others by the requirement to conform to Government policy. This policy had been based on what he now recognises as a misconception of the Dry Zone civilization that attributed its prosperity to irrigated paddy cultivation. No one can fail to be amazed by the large reservoirs ( tanks or wewas) built by kings more than a 1,000 years ago and the vast extent of paddy land reported to have been irrigated with water from them. How else could such a dry area, without large perennial rivers like the Indus or the Nile, be turned into a granary of this region. Although we marvel that it flourished for more than 1,000 years, there has been no satisfactory explanation of how it came about.
It is obvious that it cannot emerge all of a sudden. Dr. Handawela has dared to present a hypothesis that gives credit to the original Dry Zone farmers who evolved the “Hena, Wewa and Purana” system of farming. As he states, it was not a system that was transplanted here from elsewhere. He argues quite logically that the hena was the initial component of this threefold farming system. The other two components were added, perhaps, over several generations as farmers gained more knowledge of their environment through experience. Once developed, it was ideally suited to farm
the upland in a sustainable manner but as Dr. Handawela argues, it was developed for small valleys to support small communities.
Other scholars who have studied tropical land use have concluded that, under certain circumstances, this threefold farming system described using different terminology is an excellent adaptation to the tropical environment. With hindsight we see how well it utilises the soil catena but the farmers who developed this system would not have had the benefit of that aspect.
This system they developed, step by step, was a response to the environmental conditions they observed. As Dr. Handawela argues, the most powerful environmental element they had to deal with was the heavy rains during one season and long droughts in the other. Their response to this was build small earth bunds ( wetiya) to slow down the flow of water during heavy rains and also reduce soil erosion. They were thus the initial water and soil conservationists! They also built small bunds across tiny streams to preserve water for human needs in the dry periods. This enabled upland rainfed farming, but to preserve the soil fertility they had to rotate their cultivation with forest fallow to regenerate the soil. According to Dr. Handawela , evidence of these structures are still visible in areas that have not been disturbed by later interventions by people.
There was no wetland paddy cultivation in the valley bottom initially according to him as they were water logged during the rainy season and prone to flooding. The farmers did not know how to deal with those conditions. This view has been expressed by scholars studying other tropical areas also who have given it as a reason for early settlement to prefer upland areas that were easier to manage. Also these wet lowlands were prone to mosquito borne diseases that made them unhealthy. As water conservation on the higher slopes developed, and the Wewa took its position the valley bottom became more amenable to cultivation and paddy farming was practised there. Thus the early farmers developed the threefold land use system to its fullest extent over a long period of time.
At some point in history, local chieftains recognised the value of water storage during the rainy season and built larger storage tanks ( wewas) to cultivate larger extents of paddy. Dr. Handawela argues that it was a progression from there for rulers to build larger and larger reservoirs to enhance their power and the prosperity of their kingdoms. The downside of this devel- opment was that it became more vulnerable to natural disasters like floods and attracted foreign invaders who could easily inflict vast damage by attacking these large reservoirs.
Since they came into existence, our attention has been focused on them and the British rulers and, subsequently, our local rulers have made large scale irrigated paddy cultivation the main plank of our agricultural policy. While paddy farmers under irrigation have made the country largely self-sufficient in rice, the farmers themselves continue to be poor despite many subsidies and facilities provided by the Government. Present day rainfed upland farmers are neglected and forgotten and practise a very degraded form of farming that keeps them in poverty unlike the farmers who practised the threefold farming system in the past.
In both respects, agricultural policy can be considered to be a failure despite the huge investment in that sector. Dr. Handawela’s book is a challenge to those who decide our agricultural policies to analyse the policies that have been followed and remedy their shortcomings. Although investment has been concentrated in large scale irrigated paddy, there is no doubt that the prosperity of the country depends on farming the much larger upland extents as well more productively and sustainably.
We owe a grateful thanks to Dr. Handawela for his effort to swim against the flow of mainstream thinking concerning our agriculture. His and my sincere hope is that his book will stimulate innovative thinking and research that will bring prosperity to our hardworking farmers.
The publisher of the book; Godage Brothers, Colombo 10, deserves a word of thanks for volunteering to bear the cost of printing and publication.
(The reviewer is former Professor of Geography, University of Colombo and former Professor of Rural Development Planning, Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok )