State Minister of Agriculture Mohan Priyadarshana de Silva said the Government has taken measures to cultivate 11,000 hectares of fallow fields before the end of this year to deal with a food crisis in the country in the future.
The program of cultivating fallow fields will be implemented by the Department of Agrarian Development through Agrarian Service Centres and the Government has allocated Rs.420 million for the purpose .
At present, India and Pakistan have temporarily suspended the export of rice. They have taken that decision to face the world food crisis that they believe may occur in the future. Some countries are currently faced with a rice crisis. A nation we should also take precautionary measures to face this imminent crisis.
However, the Government alone cannot fulfill this formidable task. So, the support of everybody in this regard is indispensable. Nearly 7.2 percent of the country’s gross Domestic Product (GDP) is provided by the agricultural sector and its development can strengthen the national economy, the State Minister said.
He said the annual requirement of rice in this country is about 2.4 million metric tons and it has been calculated that 2.7 million metric tons of rice will be harvested this year. Therefore, the Ministry would maintain a surplus of three hundred thousand metric tons of rice.
With the aim of getting the youth involved in agriculture, the program of establishing youth agriculture villages is also under-way and steps have also been taken to provide unused Government lands to the youth for agricultural activities, he said.