Sri Lanka to seek food bank assistance but tells farmers to ‘step into fields’

 

01 June 2022

The Sri Lankan government will be applying for food bank assistance from international donors, as an economic and political crisis continues to grip the country, leading to severe food and medicine shortages.

J Krishnamoorthy, Sri Lanka’s food commissioner, told the Financial Times that the government had “just started the process” of applying for food assistance from the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation.

“We have contacted SAARC . . . [regarding] food bank assistance,” she said with Colombo reportedly seeking 100,000 metric tonnes of food as donations or subsidised sales.

The request for international food aid comes however as the country’s agriculture minister Mahinda Amaraweera called on farmers to simply grow more rice.

Admitting that the "food situation is becoming worse", Amaraweera told journalists, "We request all farmers to step into their fields in the next five to ten days and cultivate paddy [rice]".

Farmers complained of how Sri Lanka’s disastrous policy of banning chemical fertilisers had produced low crop yields, further exacerbating the island’s dire economic situation.

Read more from the FT here and the BBC here.