Peanut farmers in the Mahaweli H zone around Thambuttegama, in the Anuradhapura district, say they are unable to get a viable price for their harvest, Hiru News reported on Saturday.
The growers said they planted after buying groundnut seed at between Rs. 800 and Rs. 850 a kilogram. They are now being offered between Rs. 300 and Rs. 350 a kilogram for the peanuts they produced — less than half what the seed cost them.
What the comparison does and does not show
The two figures are the ones the farmers themselves put forward, and they are the clearest way the growers have of describing the squeeze. They are not, however, a profit-and-loss calculation: a kilogram of groundnut seed yields substantially more than a kilogram of crop, so a farm gate price below the seed price is not by itself proof of a loss.
What the gap does establish is the direction of the problem. Seed was bought at a price set before planting; the crop is being sold into a market that has moved against the grower since. Hiru does not report the yield per kilogram of seed, the acreage involved, the number of farmers affected, or what the same crop fetched last season — so the size of the shortfall cannot be worked out from the reporting.
A district already under pressure
Thambuttegama sits in a part of the Rajarata that has had a hard year. At the end of August the district secretary reported that water in 612 of Anuradhapura’s tanks had fallen below 5 per cent of capacity, with 788 of the district’s 2,410 minor tanks almost dry.
Nationally, the dry-weather toll reached 115,534 people across seven districts this week, with Anuradhapura among those affected, and the Met Department has warned of flooding after mid-October.
Farmer grievances in the same area have surfaced before. Cultivators protested in Anuradhapura in July over the terms they were getting, and in May the Thambuttegama and Rambewa areas featured in a dispute over substandard fertiliser samples.
Hiru does not link the price complaint to the drought, and no official has connected them.
Not reported
No buyer, trader or mill is named, and there is no comment from the Department of Agriculture, the Mahaweli Authority or the Ministry of Agriculture. It is not reported whether the growers are asking for a guaranteed price, a government purchase, or an import restriction, and no official response has been published.
Hiru’s report names no farmer and gives no interview beyond the two price figures. Checks of the Ada Derana, Daily Mirror and NewsFirst listings for the same day found no second outlet carrying the story.
A note on the spelling: Hiru writes the town as “Tambuttegama”. This site’s archive uses Thambuttegama, the form carried in previous reporting on the area.
