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Organic Agriculture in Sri Lanka |
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Overview of Organic Agriculture in Sri
Lanka |
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S. Vaheesan, Chairman, Lanka Organic
Agriculture Movement, |
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email:hslvaheesan@eureka.lk |
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In the past decade global trend in
organic agriculture has been its degree of mainstreaming
as a sector in agri-business. As a result new market
segments are getting opened-up and product range has
seen a growth. From food and fiber, organic firms and
companies have started looking on marketing of herbal or
health care produce and organic cosmetics. The clear
indication of the potential for promoting organic
production is the demand for many categories of produce
has often been higher than the supply. |
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The development trend of organic
agriculture in Sri Lanka in the past 5 – 10 years shows
a positive growth. The organic agriculture sub-sector
could be divided into two divisions based on whether the
production and processing are for local market or for
the export-niche markets. In the absence of organic
regulation, but only a governmental standards being
finalized by the Sri Lanka Standards Institutes (SLSI)
and a certification body for national level
certification, which is expected to start its functions
in early 2008, local marketing of organic produce does
not yet go through the formal inspection and
certification process. The production or/and processing
for export involves a systematically organized formal
inspection and certification, which is carried out by
seven internationally accredited certification bodies.
The following description mainly addresses the export
oriented and certified organic production and
processing, since there is severe dearth of official
information and statistics about the locally marketed
organic produce. |
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In 2005, there were 10,050 ha were under
‘certified organic’, which corresponds to about 0.43% of
the total agricultural area of the country, while the
average proportion of land managed organically in Asia
was 0.21% (Willer & Yussefi, 2007). |
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According to the FIBL (Switzerland)
survey, there were 35,000 organic farmers in 2004, while
the number reported in 2005 was only 3,301 farmers on
15,215 ha. Such a change in numbers and structure in one
year seems very unlikely and calls for attention on the
reliability of the statistics concerning organic
agriculture in Sri Lanka. The Export Development Board
of Sri Lanka (EDB) is currently trying to improve
statistics. The EDB states that in 2005, there were
about 22,000 farmers involved in organic cultivation in
about 17,000 ha of land out of which about 1500 ha are
recorded as the land in conversion. |
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Main Themes |
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