Record 2.6 Mn MT Yala paddy harvest this year

The Agriculture Department states that a record harvest has been achieved in the Yala Season for this year.

Generally, in other Yala Seasons, the paddy harvest in this country has been recorded as 1.6 million Metric Tonnes or 2 million Metric Tonnes. But this year the paddy harvest has increased to 2.6 million Metric Tonnes, which is enough for consumption of the country’s annual rice requirement.

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

The total paddy harvest this year has increased to 5.8 million Metric Tonnes due to 3.2 million Metric Tonnes of paddy harvest in the last Maha Season and 2.6 million Metric Tonnes of paddy harvest this year’s Yala Season.

The amount of rice that can be produced exceeds 3 million Metric Tonnes. Due to this, for the first time in many years, a surplus of rice has been recorded in Sri Lanka this year, says Agriculture and Plantation Industries Minister 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 varieties 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 million Metric Tonnes.

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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