ceylon

2011-06-25T03:33:00.000-07:00

Farming in Ceylon

Ceylon has been an agriculture country from ancient times. Farmers grow paddy and other grains such as kurakkan, meneri[proso millet] green gram, corn etc. Paddy is the most commonly grown grain in Sri Lanka. Rice is our staple food.

There were no machines or chemicals fertilizers in the past. The farmers helped each other. This was called athtam a ‘giving a hand’. The paddy field was ploughed with the help of buffaloes. Buffaloes driven ploughs are very common even today in rural areas.

Harvesting paddy was an important events in the village. In the past event the kings participated in the plughing ceremony called Vap Magula. In ancient times reaping paddy was an interesting activity in the village because the reapers recited “goyam kavi”. Most people are still familiar with this tradition because it is presented as a dance from on the stage.

The threshing floor in the place where the reaped crops were gathered. Buffaloes were used to thresh the paddy: both men and women joined in to winnow the paddy.

The paddy had to be stored until the next harvesting season. The harvested paddy was kept in a “vee bissa”. The vee bissa and indigenous storage bin. It was made using clay, straw, cane strips and bamboo. It is a fine creation of our forefathers.

Farmers got water from the village tank for cultivation. They began to study ways of bringing water from the rivers in to the tanks. For this purpose they built a network of canals. One main canal ran into the many others smaller canals. The ancient kings built great tanks to feed the canals. Parakrama Samudraya and Kala Wewa are some of them. The kings gave their fullest support to the farmers to grow the nation’s staple food, rice.

The Jaffna farmer devised a system of getting water from deep wells called ”Andiya Linda”/”Andiya kinaru”. It has a lever with a weight at one end and a bucket at the other end. This helps to get the water from deep wells without much effort.

Now a days farmers use tractors to plough the paddy fields and also to thresh-the paddy. In ancient times people used indigenous methods for killing parasites that harmed the crops. Later chemical pesticides began to be used. Pesticides killed the parasites. They are harmful to our health too. Now many people prefer organic food grown by natural methods.

Paddy (rice)

The rice,(paddy) inflorescence is made up of spikelet’s bearing the flowers. The flowers open mostly in the morning. The two scales enclosing the flower, called the lemma and the palea, separates, and the six stamens and two stigmas emerge. At this flowers are almost entirely self-pollinated.

Rice originated in Asia, probably in the Indian subcontinent. Have been domesticated in sevarl places independently, and Sri Lanka may have been one such place. It has been cultivated here since prehistoric times, and is now the staple food of the entire population. During its long period of cultivation in Sri Lanka rice has acquired much diversity. Some years ago the number of traditional cultivars was given variously as between 300 & 600 , and included much genetic variability. At present, however, most of the rice cultivated is of a few improved types.

Several wild relatives of the rice plant are found growing naturally in Sri Lanka. These are species of the same genus, Oryza sativa , which are closely related to rice. Two of them occur as weeds in and around paddy fields.

Green grams

Green gram(also known as Mung been) is a naïve of India or the India Burma region. It has been cultivated for a very long time both in India Sri Lanka. It prefers sandy or sandy loam soils which are well-trained. Cultivation is mostly in the Dry and Intermediate Zones. There are many cultivars and much variation in plant and seed characters.

Kurakkan

An annual grass producing many tillers in tuft. The stem is flattend. Inflorescence characteristic, of six or more spikes arranged like fingers at the top of the stem. Like all other millets the grain is small and almost spherical in shape. It is a dull colour.

On the contrary to kurakkan is solely utilized for human consumption, gaining popularity as a relief food for diabetics. A shift in farming systems traditionally devoted to crop is seen due to more farmers favoring irrigated transplanted kurakkan cultivation to traditional rainfed farming which was liable to get damaged by frequent droughts. Yields per unit area land has increased due adoption of improved cultivation practices and at the same time land area cultivated has continually dropped due to shift from highlands to lowlands cultivated.

Proso millet

Millets are a group of annual grass species, 4 or 500 in total that live all over the world. About 10+ of them are used in agriculture since at least 8000 BC, most common is Pearl millet , others are Finger millet, Proso millet, Foxtail millet, and exotics like Kodo millet, Little millet, Guinea millet, Japanese barnyard millet, Indian

barnyard millet. They grow very well on poorly fertilized, dry soils, and can tolerate pretty much anything except soil acidity

A shallow-rooted annual grass growing to a height of meater. The stem is slender, with hollow internodes, sometimes producing branches. The plant tillers profusely, with an average of 10 tillers, each with about 4 branches. The leaves are large and bright green. The inflorescence is much branched, with long spreading branches, and as the grai s develop they droop.The grain is small, brodly oval.The mature grain is enclosed in a hard, shining husk. The colour varies from white to pale yellow and olive.

Cowpea

A leguminous plant, with stems erect, semi-erect or twining round a support. Leaves compound, with long stalk and three leaf lets. Flowers yellow or purplish. Pods cylindrical, 20 to 30 cm long, hanging down, fairly compact. Seeds variously coloured, cream, brown, red to black, and of various size and shapes.

Black gram

A leguminous herb, usually bushy but sometime trailing along the ground. Leaves compound with 03 leaflets. Flowers yellow, pod narrow, cylindrical, coverd with short hairs. Seeds about 10 in a pod, black mottled, creamy white within, with conspicuous white hilum, ellipsoid, square at the ends.

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