Onion crop failure

Private company sells low quality seed

By Saliya Kumara Gunasekara

In another case of comic bungling, onion cultivators in the Dambulla district have been badly hit once again and are unable to reap a harvest due to callous officers of the department of agriculture authorising a private company to sell big onion seed to cultivators without checking on seed quality. This has resulted in crop failure in totality. Onion cultivators are aghast because with no harvest, they are unable to pay up loans obtained for agriculture.

Did not grow

Farmers in Dambulla, Kimbissa and Devahuwa are facing the brunt of the issue. Nearly 500 cultivators bought these seeds from a private company. It is alleged that though investigations carried out by the department of agriculture revealed that the seeds were of poor quality, the company didnot take any action to compensate cultivators. The company has been identified as ‘Tropical seed’ and it has sold two types of seed named ‘Rampur Red’ and ‘ Rampur Rose’. The price of a kilogram of the seed was 1800 rupees. Cultivators charge that they had lodged a complaint with the Dambulla Police about the low quality seed given to them, to no avail.
Though the department of agriculture is expected to examine imported seed before distribution to cultivators, in this instance it clearly proves that the department did not adhere to normal procedure.
Investigations carried out by the department of agriculture revealed that the company had sold 1000 kilograms of seed. Cultivators further charge that the department of agriculture did not so much as check the areas where the poor quality seed was cultivated. However, reacting to the news, the secretary of the Department of Agriculture K.E. Karunathilaka requested that samples of the seed be sent to the Mahailuppallama regional agricultural research centre to be checked.

Unsuitable

Accordingly, a sample was submitted to the secretary of the ministry on June 21st. Subsequently, it has been revealed in the report that the seeds were unsuitable for cultivation. K. E. Karunathilake says that this situation had arisen due to the fact that onion seed must be cultivated without delay and the quality drop was due to it being exposed to long hours of daylight during the months of June, July and August.
The department of agriculture has estimated that the harvest of big onions would drop. The last harvest yielded 1900 metric tons during the Yala season. The total requirement of big onions in the country is 35000 kilograms; however, only 10000 kilograms are produced locally. Meanwhile, the Ministry has planned to stop the import of big onions from 2013 by increasing domestic production. Though there is a capacity to produce big onions during the Yala season, cultivators charge that the authorities are not interested. Therefore farmers are rendered helpless.
Big onions are imported from India and Pakistan for domestic consumption, and farmers charge that these countries will do everything possible to prevent the cultivation of onions in the country.