Crop Diversification in the Asia-Pacific region - United Nations in ...

5. CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES5.1 Constraints in Crop DiversificationConstraints to crop diversification in the island can be grouped into five categories.They can be named as physical, agronomic, economic, social and management constraints.5.1.1 Physical ConstraintsCrop diversification has to be practiced with non-rice crops in the island. Non-ricecrops cannot tolerate excess soil moisture and prefer well drained conditions. There are only80,000 ha of such lands available in major irrigation schemes. In minor irrigation schemesalmost all the soils are imperfectly to poorly drained. The situation is even worse in the wetzone where high rainfall and frequent floods often make excess soil moisture conditionsunsuitable for growing highland crops.Land configurations of most of the irrigated rice fields do not favour the use ofmachinery, especially in well drained parts of paddy tracts. This situation prevents thefarmer from using even medium scale machinery for land preparation and increases the costof land preparation. In addition, due to the requirement of two different ways of landpreparation, more energy needs to be utilized. This discourages the farmer from practicingsuch land preparation as it also increases the cost of production.5.1.2 Agronomic ConstraintsThe majority of the upland crops cultivated in Sri Lanka do not tolerate excess soilmoisture and water saturated soil conditions and hence the farmers are left with only a fewcrops such as sugar cane, soybean and leafy vegetables that tolerate excess moisture to someextent.In rice and non-rice cropping patterns, non-rice crops of the 12-16 weeks age classare preferred and most of the cash crops exceed this age limit. On the other hand, crops in apreferred age group, for example pulses and maize, do not generate sufficient income to beattractive alternative crops. Certain crops such as okra and groundnut, which tolerate excesssoil moisture, get affected by viral diseases such as mosaic virus when cultivated in the dryseason.5.1.3 Economic ConstraintsDiversified cropping demands high input conditions and this leads to increase in thecost of production. As most of the diversifiable crops are seasonal, production comes to themarket within a short interval. In addition, most of this produce is perishable in nature andcannot be stored at farmer-level for a long period. Consequently, market prices fall duringthe harvesting period. In certain situations traders deliberately lower the prices to obtainhigh profits for them. The open economic policy that became effective during the past twodecades relaxed the import restrictions. The lower world market prices of these foodcommodities encouraged the import of these items, reducing the market price in localmarkets. The effect of the combination of all these conditions lowers the overall profitmargin for the farmer and they are compelled to shift towards easy crops, and in most cases,this is rice.124