2.6 metric tons of recorded paddy harvest in 2024 yala season

The Department of Agriculture says that a record harvest has been achieved in the yala season of 2024

Generally, in other yala seasons, the paddy harvest in this country has been recorded as 1.6 million metric tons or 02 million metric tons. But this year the paddy harvest has increased to 2.6 million metric tons, which is enough for consumption of the country’s annual rice requirement.

The monthly requirement of rice in our country is 200,000 metric tons. Accordingly, the annual requirement of rice is about 2.4 million metric tons.

The total paddy harvest this year has increased to 5.8 million metric tons due to 3.2 million metric tons of paddy harvest in the last maha season and 2.6 million metric tons of paddy harvest this year yala season.

The amount of rice that can be produced exceeds 03 million metric tons. Due to this, for the first time in many years, a surplus of rice has been recorded in Sri Lanka this year, says the Minister of Agriculture and Plantation Industries, Mr. Mahinda Amaraweera.

Due to the subsidy provided by the government as well as the decrease in the price of fertilizers, the introduction of new seed paddy verities that can yield higher yields and the introduction of new techniques, some paddy growing regions have recorded the highest yields.

For example, in Hambantota, Udawalawa, Ampara, Polonnaruwa and Ratnapura, the yield of paddy per hectare has exceeded 12 metric tons.

Because of this, the minister stated that there is no need to import rice in this year and also mentioned that the yield could have increased even more had not about 100,000 hectares of crops been damaged due to floods in this year’s yala season.

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