Agriculture Minister Namal Karunaratne says farmers who suffered crop damage after starting cultivation ahead of schedule — on the Department of Agriculture’s own advice — will be compensated, and that crop losses are being reported amid the prevailing rains.
The Minister said the Ministry had advised farmers to begin cultivation two weeks ahead of schedule this season in anticipation of severe drought in January and February, NewsFirst reported at 7.50 a.m. on Saturday.
The reasoning behind the advice
Karunaratne set out the basis for the schedule change in some detail.
The decision rested on environmental data indicating an approximately 20% increase in water evaporation, which the Ministry judged could accelerate the depletion of reservoirs and wells.
The aim was to avoid releasing large volumes of reservoir water for paddy during January and February, preserving it instead for the Yala season, when farmers may have to fall back on remaining supplies for alternative crops.
Planting early was therefore designed to let paddy harvesting begin towards the end of January and finish in February — clearing the crop before the dry spell, and reducing the risk of a water shortage carrying into the next cultivation season.
The advice and the damage
The policy and the losses are not separate stories. The crops now being damaged belong to farmers who followed a government instruction to plant earlier than they otherwise would have, and the Minister is accepting liability for that outcome rather than treating the rain as an ordinary seasonal loss.
Karunaratne said compensation would be provided to all farmers who suffer crop damage, and stressed that on the available data it is Yala that faces the greatest risk — the season the early-planting plan was designed to protect.
Context
The promise lands on a day when farm incomes were already the subject of political argument. Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa told a farmers’ meeting in Dehiattakandiya on the same Saturday that growers are selling paddy well below the government’s own stated production cost, putting the cost of a kilogram at around Rs 137 against a market price of Rs 90 to Rs 100.
Sri Lanka’s 2026/27 Maha planting was staggered earlier than usual this year as part of the El Niño adaptation, a shift the Sunday Times reported on 11 October, before the rain damage now being compensated.
Not reported
NewsFirst gives no figures: no extent of land damaged, no number of farmers affected, no districts, no per-hectare compensation rate, no total allocation, and no timetable for payment.
It does not say whether payment will run through the existing crop insurance scheme or a separate allocation, nor whether farmers who did not follow the early-planting advice are covered.
No other verified newsroom had filed on this compensation undertaking at the time of writing.
