Sri Lanka struggles with food shortage
Rising costs are forcing farmers to abandon their rice fields, officials say
Fears of a hunger crisis are rising in Sri Lanka, a teardrop-shaped island south of India. Shortages of items like flour and milk powder are widespread. Food inflation hovers around 60%. Faced with exorbitant costs, many farmers have skipped rice cultivation entirely this season.
Sri Lanka’s economic meltdown, the most dire since the nation achieved independence from the British in 1948, has taken a severe toll on the agriculture sector. Rice production in the last harvest season had already plunged 40% to 50%. Now, seed and fertilizer scarcities could shrink crop yields by as much as 50% this year, according to Mahinda Amaraweera, the agriculture minister.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has warned that curbing hunger is one of Sri Lanka’s biggest challenges over the next few months, prompting people with means to start stockpiling supplies. The United Nations estimates that almost a quarter of the population already require food assistance.
The problem echoes across Sri Lanka. Sajith Premadasa, leader of the political opposition, said an estimated 15% of children in the country are “wasting.” That term refers to underweight children whose immune systems are weak, leaving them vulnerable to developmental delays, disease and even death.
At the Lady Ridgeway hospital in Colombo, about 20% of patients suffer from malnutrition due to the ongoing crisis, local media reported.
Sri Lanka’s woes trace to depleted foreign currency reserves, ill-timed tax cuts, loss of tourism dollars and disruptions from the covid-19 pandemic. In the agriculture sector, policy missteps have also played a role. In April 2021, the government, led by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, banned synthetic fertilizer imports to push the country toward organic farming.
But without adequate preparation, the plan backfired. Sri Lanka’s entire agricultural chain — around a third of the labor force and 8% of gross domestic product — faced disruptions. Export earnings from tea, a key revenue source, dried up. As backlash grew, the government began to reverse the ban in November.
President Rajapaksa said the synthetic fertilizer ban was intended to increase the income of farmers by providing them with sustainable and cheaper alternatives.
“Our organic fertilizer manufacturers didn’t have the capacity, but I was not informed,” he said. “I didn’t get the support from people who were responsible.”
Amaraweera, the agriculture minister, has urged people to grow crops at home, saying it’s the only solution to the crisis.
For the next three months, the government has given state employees Fridays off from work to tend to their gardens. To meet shortages, Sri Lanka will need to spend more than $200 million to import fertilizers this year.
So far, the government expects a combined $150 million in assistance from the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, according to a senior official familiar with the matter. The Export-Import Bank of India has already extended a $55 million loan to Sri Lanka to buy urea, a form of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer