About 100 tea smallholders in the Matugama area came together recently at a multi-dimensional seminar conducted under a series of knowledge sharing events taking place around the country as part of the Dirishakthi Sustainable Entrepreneurship Development Program of the Commercial Bank of Ceylon.
The Commercial Bank team was joined by representatives of the Aruna Tea Factory in Matugama, the Tea Smallholders Development Authority (TSHDA), Tea Research Institute (TRI) and the Public Health Department of Meegahathenna at this program.
The program comprised lectures on communicable andnon-communicable deceases by the Public Health Department team;on how to improve the harvest in a crisis situation with minimum resources and new technologies by the TRI team;and on soil conservation and better planting methods by the TSHDA representatives.
A session on improving the savings habits of tea smallholders and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) funded Tea Smallholder Cultivation Development Loan Scheme was conducted by members of the Bank’s Development Credit Department. These lectures were supplemented with a three-hour technical and skills development session on soil fertilisation and machinery usage conducted by officers of the TRI and TSHDA. This covered topics with specific relevance to the area, such as methods of soil PH and EC testing, methods of soil carbon andnutrient testing, methods of pest identification and methods of root starch testing.