Rural livelihood and rubber cultivation in Eastern province of Sri Lanka

Abstract

With no sufficient land available for further cultivation of rubber in its traditionally grown wet areas to meet the increasing demand, the Government of Sri Lanka has targeted moderately dry areas of the country for the same. In collaboration with the peasant community, rubber is to be grown under rain fed condition together with traditional crops in these regions. Being a perennial crop which provides a long term source of income, an upliftment of rural livelihood is also expected in this exercise. Moreover, tree cover of the country is to be increased. In line with the country needs, rubber was established for the first time in the Intermediate zone of Eastern province with some farmers in a selected village. Since initial agronomic assessments were in favour of rubber cultivation in this region, a rapid livelihood analysis was carried out in the village to assess the association of this intervention with rural livelihood. Agricultural activities were confined to two seasons associated with a unimodel rainfall pattern. Strong socio-cultural interactions have made the rural livelihood rather sustainable. However, it operated at a low level in monitory terms with annual income and expenditure of a family in the range of Rs.55,000/=. Due to the dependency on seasonal crops, the income varied largely from month to month. Except for March -April and October -November, the income of the majority from agriculture was limited a value less than Rs.2,500 per month. Expenditure was mainly on subsistence and agriculture related activities and, generally below Rs.6,000 per household per month in most instances. Traditional New Year celebration in April and religious activities in May and June required an additional of ca. Rs.9,000. Demand for labour in rubber was year-round but not as high as for seasonal crops. There was a competition between rubber and other crops for labour at the beginning of Maha season (September to November), if rubber planting was undertaken. Farmers mostly planted rubber in an area of 0.2 to 0.4 ha in one occasion and also with traditional seasonal crops hence time allocation to rubber had no drastic impact on subsistence agriculture. Coping mechanisms of the society and the strategies to be placed in development programmes are also discussed.

MODUS OPERANDIIN ASSESSING BIOMASS AND CARBON IN RUBBER PLANTATIONS UNDER VARYING CLIMATIC CONDITIONS

“…Unlike in the WZ, the rubber in the IZ is grown by traditional farmers, who always tend to grow some other crop with rubber. This is particularly important to protect the rubber plants from the additional solar radiation (Rodrigo et al ., 2009) and would have been the reason for reaching the highest growth rate quicker in the IZ.…”

Natural rubber systems and climate change: Proceedings and extended abstracts from the online workshop, 23–25 June 2020

“…Uncertainty in rainfall patterns and extreme weather conditions caused by climate change has built up high level of concerns on the existence of traditional farming systems and impacts on the livelihood of resource poor farmers. Such a situation has been quite apparent in the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka where farmers cultivate short-term crops under rain-fed conditions mainly for subsistence (Rodrigo et al 2009). In particular, crop loss due to unexpected droughts in the Ampara district of the Eastern Province has been well evidenced with over 146,000 hectares affected during a 34-year period starting from 1974 (DMC 2009).…”

Potential expansion of rubber (<i>Hevea brasiliensis</i> Muell. Arg.) cultivation to the Northern region of Sri Lanka: SWOT analyses in Vavuniya district

“…Therefore, it is proposed to limit the rubber cultivation to one hectare per family and such extent is sufficient to provide a reasonable income per family, i.e. over Rs.40,000 per month (Rodrigo et al, 2009). There have been about 16,380 ha of sparsely cultivated lands which could be utilized for rubber.…”

“…In particular for this exercise, East and North regions of the country have been focused not only because their land per capita is reasonably higher, but also the livelihood of the people who were entangled in 30 year war, has to be upgraded. In this process, rubber was initially grown in the Intermediate Zone (IZ) of Eastern province and found successful in terms of both agronomic (Iqbal et al, 2010) and social aspects (Rodrigo et al, 2009(Rodrigo et al, , 2011a. With that privilege, GoSL suggested to expand rubber cultivation to the Dry zone (DZ) of East and North regions.…”

“…As experienced in India, there may be a prolonged immature period and decline in yields (Datta et al, 2010). Water availability for irrigation is very limited in this region and where it is available, those lands are devoted for more remunerative short term cash crops (Rodrigo et al, 2009). Despite that it is expected to grow rubber under rain fed conditions, some are interested in growing rubber with some level of irrigation.…”