Farming in Sri Lanka

Farming in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka has been an agricultural country from ancient times.  Farmers grow paddy and other grains such as kurakkan,  green gram,  corn etc.  Paddy is the most commonly grown grain in our country.  Rice is our staple food.  There were no machines or chemical fertilizers in the past.  The farmers helped each other.  This was called athtam or giving a hand'.  The paddy field was ploughed with the help of buffaloes.  Buffalo driven ploughs are very common even today in rural areas.  Harvesting paddy was an important event in the village.In the past even the kings participated in the ploughing ceremony called Vap magula.  In ancient times,  reaping paddy was an interesting activity in the village because the reapers recited"goyam kavi."  Most people are still familiar with this tradition because now it is presented as a dance form on the stage.

                                The threshing floor is the place where the reaped crops were gathered.  Buffaloes were used to thresh the paddy:  both men and women joined in to winnow the paddy. The paddy had to be stored until the next harvesting season. The harvested paddy was kept in a"vee bissa".  The Vee Bissa is an indigenous storage bin.  It was made using clay,  straw,  cane strips and bamboo.  It is a fine creation of our forefathers. Farmers got water from the village tank for cultivation.  They began to study ways of bringing water from the rivers into the tanks.  For this purpose they built a network of canals.  One main canal ran into many other smaller canals.  The ancient kings built great tanks to feed the canals.  Parakrama Samudraya and Kala wewa are some of them.  The kings gave their fullest support to the farmers to grow the nation's staple food,  rice.

                               The Jaffna farmer devised a system of getting water from deep wells called "andiya Linda"  /"andiya kianaru"  It has a lever with a weight at one end and a bucket at the other end.  This helps to get the water from deep wells without much effort.

                               Now a days farmers use tractors to plough the paddy fields and also to thresh the paddy.  In ancient times people used indigeneous methods for killing parasites that hamed the crops,  Later chemical pesticides began to be used.  Pesticides kill the parasites.  They are harmful to our health too.  Now many people prefer organic food grown by natural methods.