{"id":121463,"date":"2021-12-24T16:48:22","date_gmt":"2021-12-24T23:48:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=121463"},"modified":"2021-12-24T16:48:22","modified_gmt":"2021-12-24T23:48:22","slug":"agri-minister-assures-there-will-be-no-food-shortage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/12\/24\/agri-minister-assures-there-will-be-no-food-shortage\/","title":{"rendered":"Agri. Minister assures there will be no food shortage"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Courtesy Adaderana<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>Minister of Agriculture Mahindananda Aluthgamage has assured that there would not be a food shortage in the country next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He says certain statements warning about a looming food shortage cannot be accepted as 90 to 95 percent of paddy fields in each district have already been cultivated now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The minister\u2019s remarks came after a statement made by Udith K. Jayasinghe, the former Secretary to the Agriculture Ministry sparked controversy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mr. Jayasinghe was subsequently removed as the agriculture secretary and Mr. D.M.L.D. Bandaranayake was appointed to the post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Speaking to the media later, Mr. Jayasinghe said he is not aware of a specific reason for his sacking and that he is yet to be notified in writing of the move.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Meanwhile, SJB Parliamentarian J.C. Alawathuwala says the subject ministers should be sacked from their posts instead of ministerial secretaries, in order to resolve the prevailing issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy Adaderana Minister of Agriculture Mahindananda Aluthgamage has assured that there would not be a food shortage in the country next year. He says certain statements warning about a looming food shortage cannot be accepted as 90 to 95 percent of paddy fields in each district have already been cultivated now. The minister\u2019s remarks came [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[160,176],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-121463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agriculture","category-chemical-fertilizer-ban"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121463","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=121463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121463\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}