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| Farmers are preparing sandbags to prevent flood waters from entering into paddy plots in Ooriyaan, Kilinochchi (UCAN/Rubatheesan Sandran) |
By Rubatheesan Sandran
Mohammed Ismail Mohideen stood horrified as untimely torrential rain submerged and destroyed rice paddy in his three-acre field at the end of November in Sri Lanka.
“Rains continuously poured for up to two to three hours, and our whole paddy field was underwater,” the 73-year-old Mohideen said.
The farmer, who lives in Kalmunai, in eastern Sri Lanka's Ampara district, says erratic weather events, such as heavy rain and flash floods, have increased in frequency and severity annually.
Farmers say that erratic weather patterns have disturbed the traditional agrarian calendar and left farmers uncertain about their harvest.
Sri Lanka’s 2.5 million farmers comprise 30 percent of the country’s workforce and are engaged in two cultivation seasons. The Yala season relies on a network of ancient and interconnected reservoirs, locally called water tanks, while the other Maha season is rain-fed.
“Usually, we used to harvest in mid-January for Maha, but it is delayed this year as we had to postpone tilling and preparing the fields because the rain came late,” Mohideen said, explaining how their farming calendar gets disturbed.
And then came the unprecedented heavy rains in November, coupled with strong winds that lashed Sri Lanka’s northern and eastern parts, leaving a trail of death and destruction.
The disaster killed 11 people and adversely affected some 385,000, according to the Disaster Management Center.
According to a 2021 climate change report by the World Bank, Sri Lanka is among the most vulnerable countries to climate change. Acute temperature rises are projected to be faster than average.
Mohideen said climate change has become a huge threat to Sri Lankan farmers, whose mainstay is cultivating climate-sensitive paddy.
Rice remains the staple food of the island nation of over 22 million.
“Climate change could influence food production via direct and indirect effects on crop growth processes. Direct effects include alterations to carbon dioxide availability, precipitation, and temperatures,” says the World Bank report.
“Sri Lanka faces a significant threat from extreme heat, with the number of days surpassing 35°C, potentially rising from a baseline of 20 days to more than 100 days by the 2090s, under emissions pathway RCP8.5,” the report noted.
“Extreme heat threatens human health and living standards, particularly for outdoor laborers in urban areas without adequate cooling systems; this will particularly impact communities in Sri Lanka’s northern region,” the report stressed.
Muththu Sivamohan, secretary of the Iranamadu Farmers Federation in Kilinochchi, Northern Province, told UCA News that the government has yet to effectively intervene to introduce new technologies and adaptive methods to address climate change-related challenges.
“We have already started to witness the impact of climate change. Our farmers have not yet been informed of ways to face this new phenomenon,” Sivamohan noted.
He explained that most farmers live below the poverty line and are trapped in a vicious debt cycle, notably after Sri Lanka experienced its worst economic crisis in 2022.
The recent floods have destroyed thousands of hectares of rice paddy, further threatening the country’s food security. They “forced the government to import rice as well,” Sivamohan added.
The newly elected government of the left-leaning National Peoples’ Power (NPP), which campaigned against importing commodities, allowed the import of 70,000 metric tons of rice to meet local demand.
Nagamuthu Piratheeparajah, a senior lecturer at Jaffna University, said that the recent flash floods due to sudden depression in the Bay of Bengal and its unpredictable pathways indicate the country's vulnerability to climate change.
"Communities of farmers and fisher-people are badly affected,” he said as fishermen cannot go to sea because of storms and depressions.
Besides, he added that the fish catch has been dwindling because of the change in seawater temperature.
Mohideen said that farmers like him face climate-related challenges that have become “the new normal” as they now face flash floods, landslides, and storms throughout the year.
The government offers a nominal compensation: "I’m not sure I’ll be able to recover even the production expenses,” Mohideen said, looking at his flood-destroyed farm. (Courtesy- UCAN)
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