The government will take a final decision on 18 September on how the 2026/27 Maha cultivation season proceeds, after a preliminary round of talks on 8 September, as El Niño conditions force a rethink of the planting calendar.
D.P. Wickremasinghe, Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Land and Irrigation, said discussions on commencing the season would be held on the 8th, with the final decision taken on the 18th at a meeting of all relevant stakeholders, NewsFirst reported.
The remarks came at a Colombo press conference on Friday — the media briefing on the start of the Maha season that the Cabinet subcommittee on El Niño had scheduled for September 4 when it met earlier in the week.
Sow by 25 October
EconomyNext’s account of the same briefing sets out the technical advice behind the review, and is considerably fuller than the ministry’s own framing.
Sri Lanka is targeting roughly 830,000 hectares of paddy for the 2026/27 Maha season. Department of Agriculture Director General G.G. Wickramasinghe urged farmers to begin land preparation immediately on the late-September rains and to finish sowing between 15 and 25 October.
The reasoning is a squeeze between two extremes. Forecasts point to above-average rainfall in October and November, driven by El Niño together with a positive Indian Ocean Dipole; rainfall then drops sharply from January as temperatures climb. Sowing early leaves crops roughly a month old before the heaviest November downpours arrive, avoiding flood damage, and allows 3.5-month varieties to be harvested in late January, before the dry spell sets in.
Officials also urged water discipline, warning that this season’s usage determines whether there is a viable Yala season in 2027. Farmers were advised to avoid long-duration paddy varieties and to adopt Alternate Wetting and Drying irrigation, developed at the Rice Research and Development Institute in Batalagoda, which the department says saves around three full irrigation turns.
“After establishing the crop, keep the field flooded for about two weeks, and then allow the water to gradually deplete over the next two weeks.”
Water-deficit paddy tracts are being encouraged to switch to other field crops — maize, green gram, cowpea and finger millet — and officials said farmers who make that switch on paddy land remain fully eligible for fertiliser subsidies.
Two officials with near-identical surnames spoke at the briefing: D.P. Wickremasinghe, the ministry secretary, and G.G. Wickramasinghe, the Department of Agriculture’s director general. They are different people.
Relief still being worked out
Trade, Commerce, Food Security and Cooperative Development Minister Wasantha Samarasinghe said at the same conference that discussions were under way on relief for those already hit, NewsFirst reported separately.
The full extent of the impact “cannot be measured as yet,” he said, adding that the government is considering livelihood assistance for people who have lost crops and livelihoods.
No figure or timeline was attached. That sits alongside relief already flowing: crop compensation began paying out on Friday at Rs. 100,000 per hectare capped at five acres, from a Rs. 3 billion Cabinet allocation, while the dry-weather caseload has reached 115,534 people across seven districts.
Three dates now in the calendar
The Maha review adds to a thickening schedule. The Cabinet subcommittee on El Niño meets again on 14 September; the stakeholder decision falls on the 18th; preliminary talks are on the 8th. The Department of Meteorology, whose director general Ajith Wijemanna has said the World Meteorological Organization puts near-certain odds on El Niño persisting to February, is being brought into the cultivation discussions.
Not reported
Neither outlet said what options are actually on the table for the 18th — whether a delayed start, a reduced target acreage, or a switch away from paddy on part of the 830,000 hectares. No outlet reported who attends the 8 September round, whether the 830,000-hectare target survives the review, or how the Maha decision interacts with the irrigation releases already halted in Polonnaruwa. Samarasinghe gave no value, eligibility rule or date for the livelihood assistance under consideration.
