The Department of Agriculture says plans are underway to produce half of Sri Lanka’s annual big onion requirement locally, with the upcoming Yala season harvest set as the target.
The country consumes an estimated 320,000 metric tonnes of big onions a year, the department said. Meeting half of that domestically would require roughly 160,000 tonnes — well above anything Sri Lanka has grown before.
Above the 2014 record
The highest big onion crop on record was in 2014, when around 100,000 tonnes were harvested from approximately 6,000 hectares. Production has fallen away since then, with the department attributing the decline to rising cultivation costs and the sale of cheaper imported big onions in the local market, which pushed many farmers out of the crop.
A special programme has now been launched to bring growers back to big onion cultivation, with the introduction of modern technology as its central plank.
Yields per acre
P. Sisira Kumara, Director of Projects and Training at the Department of Agriculture, said steps are being taken to educate farmers on modern cultivation techniques aimed at raising yields per acre while cutting production costs.
He said the department expects those measures to deliver its targeted production levels through the coming Yala harvest. The department did not publish an acreage figure for the programme or say what share of the target is already under cultivation.
The push comes as the Agriculture Ministry works on a separate cultivation plan to protect food security under El Niño conditions, with a Cabinet sub-committee due to review the weather situation on Monday. Reservoir storage has fallen to 37% of capacity nationally.
