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Agricultural Research in Sri Lanka: An Historical Account

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Adam Pain
Adam Pain
Affiliation:
School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia
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Extract

An underlying premise of much of the comment on developing countries' agricultural research organizations and capabilities, has been that they are weak, and have been unsuccessful in generating new technologies and meeting farmers' needs. Indeed, one of the very justifications for the setting up of the series of international research institutes, such as the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) was that national research programmes were seen to lack sufficient strength and organization to be able to respond to the urgent needs of food production that were identified in the 1960s. It was argued that a primary role of the International Centres would be to support and develop such national research programmes both through training and the provision of new plant varieties and technologies, and that the building up of local research capability in developing countries would come only after the International Research Centres had developed and transferred the new technologies.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 20 , Issue 4 , October 1986 , pp. 755 - 778
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

I am grateful for comments on an earlier draft by Steve Biggs, Piers Blaikic, Barbara Harriss, Mick Moore and Benny Farmer.

1 The setting up of the International Service for National Research Programmes (ISNAR) in 1981 as a further institution in the CGIAR system has explicitly reinforced this role.

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48 Moseman and Mclung (1974).

49 The absence of such documents may well reflect both consistency and agreement between the Department of Agriculture and the Government. The major occasion on which policy documents were produced was when there was disagreement between the Departments of Agriculture and Irrigation. This will be discussed later.

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55 In his forward to the Mahaweli Projects and Programme in 1979 commented ‘it is my fond hope that following on the massive resettlement in the Rajarata (the ancient kingdom of the Sinhalese) which in effect will mark the return of the people to our ancient kingdom and homeland, our people will respond to the ancient civilisation which flourished in the Rajarata’.

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64 It should be noted that the expansion in rice production between 1966 and 1970 took place on the basis of the H varieties and not on the new hybrids.

65 They were essentially written by A. T. M. Silva and E. Abeyratne, indicating, as previous experience does, a strong influence by the Department of Agriculture in the creation of policy relevant to its own activities.

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