2.6 metric tons of paddy harvest is recorded in 2024 Yala season.

The Department of Agriculture states that a record paddy harvest has been achieved during this Yala season.

Generally, in other Yala seasons, the paddy harvest in this country has been recorded as 1.6 million metric tons or 2 million metric tons. However, in this year, the paddy harvest has increased to 2.6 million metric tons, which is sufficient for consumption of the country’s annual rice requirement.

The monthly requirement of rice in our country is 200,000 metric tons. Accordingly, the annual requirement of rice is about 2.4 million metric tons.

The total paddy harvest this year has increased to 5.8 million metric tons due to 3.2 million metric tons of paddy harvest in the last Maha season and 2.6 million metric tons of paddy harvest this year’s Yala season.

The amount of rice that can be produced exceeds 3 million metric tons. Due to this, for the first time in many years, a surplus of rice has been recorded in Sri Lanka this year, mentions Mr. Mahinda Amaraweera, Minister of Agriculture and Plantation Industries.

Due to the fertilizer subsidy provided by the Government as well as the decrease in the price of fertilizers, the introduction of new seed paddy varieties that can yield higher paddy harvest and the introduction of new techniques, some paddy growing regions have recorded the highest yields.

For instance, in Hambantota, Udawalawa, Ampara, Polonnaruwa and Ratnapura, the yield of paddy per hectare has exceeded 12 million metric tons.

Owing to this, the Minister stated that there is no need to import rice during this year and also mentioned that the yield could have increased even more unless about 100,000 hectares of crops had been damaged due to floods during Yala season this year.