The Eastern province was recently liberated from the LTTE menace and the government is beginning to implement a policy programme to revive the province economically and socially and is calling on the private sector to participate in the process.
However several private sector companies had been with the people of the East through thick and thin and will now have some valuable insights in to the province which could encourage other organisations to venture into the war torn, tsunami ravaged province.
For 40 years Hayleys PLC had provided inputs and value added crops and paddy cultivation in the province has frozen in time, Director Hayleys PLC, Rizvi Zaheed said.
"Paddy cultivation had frozen in time compared with the other provinces because of the war the farmers continued to use traditional methods. However, unlike in the rest of the country the land remained intact and not fragmented," he said.
"The farmers were pre-occupied with trying to survive the hard times that they could not concentrate on their techniques and develop along with the rest the island. It will take some time for them to get used to the (relatively) normal conditions."
Currently the paddy crops from the entire province are transported to Polonnaruwa to be milled.
"This does not make sense and the need to set up mills in the province will only add more value."
Hayleys have targeted to increase the number of farmers from whom the company brought paddy to 400 by the year’s end. Zaheed said that farmers had the potential to earn Rs 50,000 per acre.
In 2006 the Eastern province accounted for 25 percent of the country’s yield and it is expected that the province had the potential to grow enough paddy to make the whole country self-sufficient in paddy.
Agrarian services need to be constructed which cannot be done by the private sector alone, Zaheed pointed at amidst calls for the private sector to drive economic development at the Sri Lanka Economic Summit recently.
The company had introduced value added crops to the region and farmers were able to get good returns especially for their gherkin crop yields which were used to meet demand in European markets, to which the farmers were linked up.
"So far 50 acres have been used for gherkin cultivation and we hope to increase to 50,000 acres soon. The return to a farmer is about Rs. 100,000 per acre," he said.
He said that farmers could be assisted to tap the benefits of other crops such as pineapple and bananas which enjoyed a healthy demand in foreign markets.
Zaheed said that Hayleys was developing a model for a one-stop-shop for the farmer community is working on transferring best production practices in the region.
"We are working on a concept to link more farmers to international markets," he said.
