Rice Paddy cultivation April/May 2007

I am a novice in paddy cultivation. I am planting paddy in an area that has been opened by DS Senanayake in the 1930s as minister of agriculture prior to Independance. This was the first colonisation scheme, namely the Minneriya Colony. My land is an intact 5 acre parcel that was given to a farmer from Waga in the Padukka area in the 1930's. The son of this farmer is a friend of mine and is a local ayurvedic physician who specializes in sprains and bone fractures. This parcel of land has been fallow for many years as the owner from whom I bought the property had not cultivated it. So the three acres of paddy fields that I cultivated, had not been planted on for a while and took me a lot of time and effort to clear the weeds and restore the fields to a plantable condition.

The first time I ever planted paddy was on December 15th 2006. I gave the task of sowing to a man who the locals said is the best in the area. A man who has done this for 50 years as he proudly says. However it was a disaster. He just sowed too much seed paddy leaving little room for the plants to grow big. As they were not heavy and full they grew a little taller than usual and the winds blew much of it down just before the harvest.

So the yield was lower than I expected and due to the fallen paddy more straw had to be cut. With more straw the loads that had to be carried was greater, and the time on the Threshing machine locally known as the Tsunami was greater. These machines cost Rs50/- a minute so it is not cheap. In the last harvest I spent 10,000/- to cut the paddy and a further 10,000/- for the threshing. The 5,000 kg of Red Samba paddy that this produced is worth less than 80,000/- if I sold it to the government and my direct costs including all inputs was about 80,000/- so I made no money. In fact I lost money as the costs were incurred before the expected revenue. One benefit was that I had cleared the land and the clearing cost was defacto lost in the cost of land preparation.

So I decided to keep the paddy and store it in my room and mill it and sell rice througout the next 6 months. The 5,000 kg will give me 3,500 kg of rice. If I sell at 40/- per kg wholesale ( I sell retail in my kade at 45/-kg) I will get 140,000/-after an additional milling cost of 10,000/- ( Rs 2/- per kg). The gross profit then becomes 50,000/- If the transport cost over the period to take it to the shops amounts to 15,000/ I then make a little money, hardly enough do this exercise again. Remember, if I rent the land to a farmer instead ,I will get about 1000 kg as the rental for my land. There are no costs on my part and this is definitely a more profitable alternatve. The paddy I get for this is white samba, as that is what is grown here normally and has a retail price 25% less than the red samba. I am one of the few people who has grown this rice in the district. Red samba is usually grown in the South but is also grown in the Eastern province and Wayamba province.

For my next harvest, I decided on a different method of planting. One that is rarely used in the Polonnaruwa district. Despite the fact that this method has the ability to increase yield by at least 20% and if properly done can be 30% higher, no farmer does it. That is by transplanting. Please note that the small scale rice farmers in Japan always transplant and they use small hand operated transplanting machines.

I planted the seed paddy in one field on April 27th 2007. On Vesak Poya, that is May 1st I had this field surrounded and lit with 300 coconut oil lamps. It was like a little lake as the water filled the field and the seeds had taken root. I used 25% of the seed paddy I used in the earlier planting. I straight-away saved 1500/- by using less inputs. I did not use any weedicide, pesticide or pre-emergent herbicide. I get water from the Minneriya Wewa. I only used about 10 kg of Urea on the field to get the plants to grow healthily, as I had not been able to put any other fertilizer prior to planting.

I transplanted all this paddy on May 25th at a manual transplanting cost of 5000/-. Basically the labor rate for women to transplant now is 400/- a day and it was 12 women days of transplanting. I cannot understand why men don't want to transplant. I would have done it, but the women said I was too slow. They have a method and they may have thought that I may muck up if I interfered.

Of course I had to spend a further 10,000/- on tractor hire to plough the fields and ready it for transplanting. I do not have my own hand-tractor. I also spent a further 3,500/- on getting the fields cleared of weeds on the perimeter and strengthening them for the gravity fed watering of the fields from the irrigation canal water that I receive.

The government bureaucracy was only able to release the subsidized fertilizer by June 10th almost 8 weeks into planting.( the subsidy is good bearing in mind the market price for the fertilizer, however I am not sure it can productively maximize yields of paddy. I believe better planting methods can maximize yields more than the subsidy. I only used half the subsidy on the paddy as I felt I did not need to use more, for fear of putting too much artificial fertilizer and encouraging weeds, and I could use the fertilizer saved for my other cultivations. I feel I need it much to make a greater impact on vegetable and fruit yields.

Ask any farmer who grows vegetables and paddy. He would without hesitation say that per rupee of fertilizer, vegetable cultivation will give him a return five times that of paddy and in that sense we are wasting colossal amounts of fertilizer on paddy, which would be more productive on vegetable farming. By the way if you don't already know, there is no subsidy for vegetable farming, only for paddy farming. There are no floor prices for vegetables and high yields can lead to severe drops in prices that can devastate farmers.

Due to a shortage of water, we as farmers were asked only to till 75% of our land. While I did that on mine, and accordingly applied only for 75% of the fertilizer subsidy from the previous period, all the farmers around me ignored that request and tilled all their land. This will put pressure on the availability of water and I will also lose out as the irrigation canal ends on my property. By the time it gets to me all the farmers up stream have taken more than they are entitled to, leaving me to fight tooth and nail for the little I get. I will leave the discussion on water wars I have to fight for another section in the future.

The jury is still out on the yield as I have a few months to sort that out. I expect to harvest my rice a full month before the rest of the farmers. Most farmers in the area only sowed their fields after 20th of May. Arguably I may be the first farmer in the Polonnaruwa district to harvest. I expect to harvest on or about 31st July. Most farmers here will only harvest at the end of August or sometime in September. There will be a lot of pressure on water in those hot dry months and the irrigation tanks will be running dry before the October/ November rains.