Sri Lanka faces looming food crisis with stunted rice crop

Nallathambi Mahendran walked through his four acres of emerald green paddy fields in northern Sri Lanka's Kilinochchi district, indicating the height the plants should have reached by now. They were several feet short.

The standing paddy crop across most of this major rice growing belt is stunted for the second successive season because of the lack of fertiliser, according to farmers, a union leader and local government officials, reports Reuters.

In 10,900 hectares of land under cultivation in Kilinochchi, the average yield is likely to hit 2.3 metric tonnes per hectare, according to government estimates seen by Reuters.

In previous years, paddy fields in the area delivered around 4.5 tonnes per hectare, according to a local government official who asked not to be named because he was not authorised to speak to media.

Across rice farms in this Indian Ocean island, the bleak picture is emerging that the summer harvest could be as low as half that of previous years, according to experts.

As Sri Lanka's staple food, it points to further pressure on a country already struggling with its worst economic crisis in modern times, including runaway inflation and growing levels of malnutrition.

The shortage of fertiliser is not the only problem for farmers. The country has hardly any currency reserves to import adequate fuel, so farm machinery and trucks to transport rice to markets are in short supply. Some farmers say their crops are not worth harvesting.

Compounding the economic misery, the stunted crop means the island will have to use precious currency reserves, a credit line from India as well as foreign aid to import hundreds of thousands of tonnes of rice.