{"id":106614,"date":"2020-09-14T16:04:44","date_gmt":"2020-09-14T23:04:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=106614"},"modified":"2020-09-14T16:04:45","modified_gmt":"2020-09-14T23:04:45","slug":"a-story-from-coffee-ideas-for-our-economic-revival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/09\/14\/a-story-from-coffee-ideas-for-our-economic-revival\/","title":{"rendered":"A Story from Coffee. Ideas for our economic revival."},"content":{"rendered":"

By Garvin Karunaratne , former G.A.Matara<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

The other day, locked down in Sri Lanka because of the\nCorona,  I ran out of the Starbucks\nCoffee I had brought with me. Being a coffee connoisseur,  the tastes of Island, Hariischandra and\nWijeya Coffee did not satisfy me. I have yet to find Soul Coffee.  They are all the same- the same taste as half\na century ago. They were all pure coffee, not blended to different tastes. I\nwent to Coffe Bean, the leading coffee maker in Colombo that has a countless\nnumber of coffee outlets in Colombo  .\nMost of those joints only sold the coffee as a drink and ultimately they\ndirected me to go to their headquarter store on Ward Place .  At Ward Place they offered me a pack of\ncoffee beans imported from the USA-    at\nRs 2400. That was a pack of 8 ozs. That size of \npacket is sold at around  five\npounds at Starbucks in London and Island Coffee sells this quantity  for around five hundred rupees <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They ground the coffee and it tasted good.. I made inquiries.. The\ncoffee beans, all roasted to taste,  had\nbeen imported from the USA- California, Camarillo CA 93012. California does not\nproduce coffee. So the coffee comes from a non producing country to us, a\ncoffee producer!  Coffee beans come\nmainly from African countries. the pack is sold in Califorrnia  for around seven dollars come to us and gets\nsold to us at Rs 2400 the equal of some ten pounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sri Lanka instead of growing coffee has been importing from China,\nMalaysia, Thailand all countries visited by me where I have been struck with\nhow they organize their agriculture. We also import from Mid East countries\nthat do not grow coffee. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is where our foreign exchange has been going since 1977. Once\nwe did produce the best  coffee in the\nworld. On my irrigation inspections in Kitulgala long ago I have seen coffee\nbushes full of coffee beans, bright red in colour. I have not seen that much of\nluscious growth anywhere else. I have also seen similar coffee in coffee bushes\nat Kotmale when I worked in Nuwara Eliya. But now Kotmale has been axed  by the Kotmale Dam- all to produce some  200 MW of power- some power that we could\nhave easily produced from some 70    wind\nturbines scattered in Kotmale itself and the luscious productive  land in Kotmale and the charming people would\nhave been saved. But that is another story. See   my Paper: Sitawaka Hydro Project:  in Lanka Web11\/8\/19. to understand the\nnuances in our development order where we sacrifice what development and\nproduction we have and more we justify doing it. I am sad that Sri Lanka had no\nleaders who could avoid getting bluffed by interested influentials and I hope\nthat our new President will tackle problems efficiently. That brain that\ntackled the LTTE will I am dead cert will stand up to that task.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kitulgala  is our coffee\nbelt.  We do need to ban the import of\ncoffee which  our President has done, I\nthink. Simultaneously we have to encourage the picking of coffee pods from the\nexisting coffee bushes, immediately get going with encouraging the coffee\ngrowers to put some manure and cow dung, and wear a mask and additional clothes\nwhen plucking because coffee bushes are also full of mosquitoes . There has to\nbe a village organization to activize the coffee growers and also the\nGovernment must offer   a guaranteed\nprice to buy coffee-like what we did in the Marketing Department in the Fifties\nwhen we offered guaranteed prices for many items that  we imported- that was in the Fifties and when\nproduction increased we ended that scheme. But now we have no organization to\nbuy the produce.  Both the Marketing\nDepartment and the worthwhile sections of the Agrarian Services have been axed\nat the dictate of the International Monetary Fund that the Government should\nnot attend to any commerce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We do talk big about having guaranteed prices but the IMF axed the\norganization that we had built to implement that scheme. Motoring around Sri\nLanka today I often spot the Agrarian Services stores- now overgrown with\nshrubs, neglected. Then they were  places\nvibrant with life, where the multipurpose cooperatives that purchased produce\nfrom producers and handed over. It is easy to talk of guaranteed prices but we\nshould know that we do not now have the officialdom to purchase the produce.\nTake paddy we talk big about what we collect every season, but we forget that\nthe benefit of the premium price has fattened the trader. The paddy producers have\nno cooperative stores to hand it over and sell to the traders for a song who\nhands it over to the government stores and benefit from the premium price. And\nour economic sleuths in our Ministries fail to grasp that the producer is left\nin the lurch while the traders benefit. The main aim of a  guaranteed premium price is to help the\nproducer gain a premium price so that he will be encouraged to grow more. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once in the Fifties working in the Agrarian Services in charge of\nthe Anuradhapura District I had ten smart and able, very vibrant divisional\nofficers, who could even sell ice to the Eskimoes. Under them I had some fifty\ntrained overseers and they manned two hundred and ninety eight cultivation\ncommittees- where farmers would meet very often and get coaxed by me and my\nteam to use fertilizer, improved seed and that was how the Green Revolution\nbrought Sri Lanka to the brink of self sufficiency in paddy- all while\nimplementing a scheme to offer rice at reduced rates to the needy- a target\nthat had never been achieved in any country. Then I had the organization,. In\nfact then I remember we did import maize and I offered to produce all the maize\nthat was imported in one season. One word from me and my giants- they were real\ngiants and I was proud of them, would have mobilized the people through the\nvibrant cultivation committees.. The Government did not approve my suggestion\nand we worked only on paddy. Now we talk. The Government has to bring back the\nMarketing Department and the sections of the Agrarian Services that were axed.\nThere is no other way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us use our expertise to see what can be done for coffee. To\nstart with   sad to say the Department of\nAgriculture is dead at the village level today. They have no organization at\nthe village level and no men.  This\nhappened some twenty eight years ago in 1992 when President Premadasa in one of\nhis unguarded moments  promoted all\nAgricultural Overseers, some 2400 of them to the rank of Grama Niladhari. The\nspecialists in agriculture the trained overseers all became white collar\nworkers as Grama Niladharis, pushing pens on paper instead of working in the\nvillages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sad to say till today there is no field level overseer trained in\nagriculture. Today the closest trained agricultural officer works at the divisional\nlevel. This officer  has a few thousands\nof farmers to cater to =  the needs of\nsome 3500 farmers in Ranorawa and as much as 13,000 farmers in Yodakandiya,\n(From patriot Ranith Mulleriyawa : The Island 04\/06\/2013) In short today our\nspecialist agriculture department has no base and as far as organizing be it\ncoffee or any other crop our officers can plan on paper and send it to the\ndivisional level. After that there can be no action whatsoever other than the\nAgricultural Instructor at the divisional level \nmeeting a few farmers and writing something back to the District\nAgricultural Officer. Then the statistics get transformed to documents on\nglazed paper and  ably documented. The\nDepartment of Agriculture,  figuratively\nis a monster  with provincial ministers,\nsecretaries and directors with no legs, producing only reams of reports without\na base!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So ends anything in agriculture, be it coffee, potatoes, maize or\nany other crop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What we need immediately for Coffee is a guaranteed price and an\norganization to help the producer to produce more. There has also to be\nsubsidies offered to get people to plant more coffee bushes. Further it is\nnecessary that  some government\norganization gets cracking  to the task\nof finding how coffee can be blended to taste. Therein comes what I directed in\nMatara as the Government Agent in 1971. Our President has got the State\nMinisters on the move. It is necessary to get the mass of Government Agents and\ntheir vast staffs amounting to thousands cracking. Perhaps what I did at Matara\nmay offer ideas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wanted to find the art of making a crayon to establish an\nindustry. We requisitioned the science lab at Rahula Collage every evening from\nsix to midnight and  we- my Planning\nOfficer, a chemistry graduate and katcheri  officers were hard at work helped by the\nscience teachers of Rahula to find the art of making crayons. It took a myriad\nof experimental trials and we did find the art of making crayons in three\nmonths. Then we dragged in the cooperatives \nto establish Coop Crayon, which was a great success.  Sumanapala Dhanayake the Member of Parliament\nfor Deniyaya happened to be the President of the Coop Union at Morawaka  and I can in nostalgia recall getting down to\nmake crayons. It was done in double quick time-in three weeks working on a 24\nhour basis- on most days I too broke rest. \nIt was hailed as great success by the Minister of Industries Mr\nSubasingfhe and crayons were sold islandwide. That is what we immediately\nrequire for coffee- someone to experiment. Recently I stayed a few nights in a\nleading star resort in Anuradhapura and got to know the chief chef. I had a\nchat with him trying to entice him to blend coffee with a flash of vanilla and\nthe likes to get different tastes. I can do no more- only talk. The Government\nhas to take the lead to find the blends and get cracking in production  so that we can chase away Nescafe from our\nshores and save our valuable foreign exchange and also creating employment for\nour own people..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the days of Sirimavo we\ndid have that organization \u2013 the Divisional Development Councils, the brain of\nDr NM at work.  Dr NM is no more. . Our\nPresident is kindly requested to get cracking with a programme like the DDCP, a\nbetter one which will get down to work in producing what we need and thereby\nsave foreign exchange as well as finding employment for our people. Stopping\nimports is the first step. This has to be supplemented  with a production base which we do not have.  My own work the Youth Self Employment\nProgramme does flash in my mind. Then  I\nwas marching with the Youth Officers in the villages and marshes of Bangladesh,\nguiding vocationally trained youths to establish ventures and they did succeed.\nToday the Ministry of Youth Development has \nreformed to a  role of guiding\nyouth to establish enterprises and mind you by now three million of them are at\nwork- the largest employment creation programme the world has known. . My Paper\n Youth Employment: A Prime Necessity\u201d in Lanka Web: 11\/10\/2019   tells it all. . (www..lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/10\/11\/youth-employment-a-prime-necessity)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We need new thinking for Sri Lanka to emerge under our new\nPresident. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hope this paper will somehow reach the eyes of our new leaders. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Garvin Karunaratne, , Ph.D in Non Formal Education and\nAgricultural Economics (Michigan State University) garvin_karunaratne@\nhotmail.com<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Former Senior Assistant Commissioner of Agrarian Services and G.A.\nMatara<\/p>\n\n\n\n

13\/09\/2020<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Garvin Karunaratne , former G.A.Matara The other day, locked down in Sri Lanka because of the Corona,  I ran out of the Starbucks Coffee I had brought with me. Being a coffee connoisseur,  the tastes of Island, Hariischandra and Wijeya Coffee did not satisfy me. I have yet to find Soul Coffee.  They are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-by-garvin-karunaratne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106614\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}