Why is the struggle for food sovereignty so important in Sri Lanka?
Anuka: With the ‘open economy’ starting in 1977 and especially with the free trade agreements, our economy collapsed. We have become totally dependent on imported foods, even for essentials like dal (lentils), fish, sugar, and main staples like rice. People's attitudes are shifting; they no longer want to eat the crops we grow in Sri Lanka. For example, people say jackfruit is too hard to prepare.
About 70 percent of people in Sri Lanka live in rural areas and on farms, but malnutrition rates are high, sometimes as high as 34 percent in big agrarian settlement districts. People are dependent on food imports. They grow some crops to sell, such as rice, banana, and maize, but they do not grow their own food. Many are dependent on food imports. So you could say we have food security, but not food sovereignty.
As the population increases, the same land needs to be divided among the family's children, who will build houses on their plots, with only a small area remaining for farming. While the pieces of land people can farm are smaller, the cost of production has become higher. Companies provide seeds, fertilizer, tools, and sometimes they even help to prepare the land. However, the harvests are often insufficient to cover the costs of these services, leaving farmers with substantial debts. This leads most people to sell their entire harvest to survive.
My grandparents and even my parents used to have a small plot of vegetables alongside the rice field, but people no longer do that as they are using everything for rice. This means that today many children do not eat green leaves or other local vegetables. For this reason, at MONLAR, we are engaging with food sovereignty and are not just focused on changing farming practices.
Hemantha: Challenges to food sovereignty in Sri Lanka include corruption, labour shortages, and expensive machinery. But perhaps the biggest problem is access to farmland. We are an island nation, so we have to balance forest and agricultural areas. We have 17% real forest, but the government claims it is about 29% and wants to increase it to 32%, due to the climate crisis. But there is simply no additional fertile land available that can be converted into agricultural land. So people start to clear the forest. We have over 33 court cases filed against land grabbing and forest grabbing by agricultural corporations that were clearing forest areas after they exhausted farmland.
And that’s also where we encounter the human-elephant conflict. In Sri Lanka, 70% of elephants live outside national parks in areas that are being cleared for farming. Often, half the harvest is destroyed. Farmers use precautions like electric fences to keep elephants out and they kill elephants using poisons, guns, electrocution and other methods. This causes over 400 elephant deaths and around 200 human lives lost annually. Resolving this conflict requires increasing access to other farmland, so people stay out of the forest. The best way to do so is converting abandoned farmlands and wastelands back to fertile land using agroecology.
What happened when the government banned chemical inputs in 2021?
Hemantha: In 2021, the government abruptly introduced a ban on the import of all chemical inputs and announced the whole country would convert to organic farming overnight. It was a big shock. Everybody came out to protest on the streets, because farmers had been pushed to use chemical inputs since the 1970s, since the Green Revolution. How can you change an entire practice overnight? Production plummeted, food prices soared, and it became a major crisis. What the government should have done instead, is embark on a phase out strategy.
We have become totally dependent on imported foods
The problem the government attempted to solve was not directly related to agriculture, but rather the lack of adequate foreign currency to purchase agricultural chemicals. This episode was riddled with corruption. After five months, the ban was lifted for certain export crops, including tea. But the government did not fully reinstate subsidies for chemical fertilizers, and the impact of the initial ban continues to be felt.
Anuka: After this crisis, we jumped to promoting agroecology. People understand that we need alternatives due to the high price of chemical inputs. Women understand that beyond farming, this is a debt issue. In Sri Lanka, approximately 2.4 billion women are impacted by microfinance loans, and 200 women have committed suicide, many due to the large debts they owe.
With MONLAR, we are now working in microfinance and agroecology. Women are replacing commercial crops with local ones such as green gram, cowpea, and native bananas in an agroforestry system. They are forming their own cooperatives. Collective capital is the key: women’s groups pooling money, seeds, and labour. So-called ‘master farmers’, most of them women, are training communities on technical and political aspects of agroecology. Women are the guardians of ancestral knowledge, and they are taking on roles in decision-making spaces within farmer unions. This is our strategy to overcome the crises.
Sri Lanka is known as a hotspot of seed diversity. How is this playing a role in the movements?
Hemantha: The traditional seed bank of Sri Lanka is gone. Hybrid seeds are imported from Malaysia and other countries. The seed diversity we require to deal with climate change and drought has vanished. In 1992, over 750 rice varieties were available. Now only 60 are available. Previously, we had 3,000 varieties of rice in Sri Lanka – we were the rice bowl. There were also over 750 banana varieties and more than 300 maize varieties. They have all been replaced by imported banana and maize varieties. If we want to be resilient to climate change, we need a robust national seed bank and healthy soils, in addition to considerable courage and mobilisation power.
If we want to be resilient, we need a robust national seed bank, healthy soils, courage and mobilisation power
Anuka: Seed diversity is resilience. I am also a seed saver. I have 58 varieties of rice, 12 varieties of banana, and six varieties of maize. In Sri Lanka, many people don’t believe in agroecology because they are addicted to conventional farming. But we found that especially young people and women like being seed keepers, they understand the value. At MONLAR, we are now working with 5,000 farmers who are increasing diversity on their farms and saving seeds. Together, we aim to revive the diversity we once had.
What are your hopes for the outcomes for Sri Lanka of the Nyéléni Forum in September?
Anuka: The Forum may help the government to gain a different understanding of agriculture and trade. We know they are planning to sign numerous trade agreements, which will result in significant food imports. We hope they will agree to sign and implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas. La Via Campesina will also launch an alternative trade framework, which we will propose they adopt. It is essential that we unite as diverse movements, extending beyond the food sovereignty movement, to facilitate these political changes here in Sri Lanka and globally.
Hemantha: We expect approximately 600 people from all over the world to visit during this time, and we look forward to welcoming everyone to Sri Lanka. We are also inviting local farmers and politicians to the event and we are conducting extensive media work, as we aim to amplify the impact of the Nyéléni Forum.
In Sri Lanka, many people are dying from toxic foods, and we have an unidentified chronic kidney disease in agricultural areas in dry zones- some people think it is a result of pesticides or heavy metals in fertilizer. We also have increasing rates of cancer. People need clean and safe food and are learning about the importance of agroecology. The Nyéléni Forum can be an awakening of this mentality.
Interview by Janneke Bruil, member of the Editorial Board of Rooted and co-founder of Cultivate! Contact: janneke@cultivatecollective.org
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This article is part of Issue 3-2025: Weaving Resilience and Resistance
