Problem overview:

     Awareness and visions: In Sri Lanka, crop diversification on degraded tea land is one example of the strategy to 'integrate environmental concerns into the development process without fettering development itself.'

     Integrating stakeholders: Tea farmers in Sri lanka have been given long-term leases to land, making land and soil management a very important matter to them. These farmers have adopted environmental friendly farming practices in order to keep their land fertile throughout their lease time.

Background:

      In Farming, environmental care increases in direct proportion to the length of time a farming family has access to and authority over, the land.

      In Sri Lanka, crop diversification on degraded tea land is one example of the strategy to 'integrate environmental concerns into the development process without fettering development itself.'

      After the nationalization of large tea plantations in the early 1970s, poor management under state control resulted in a decline of their productivity and profitability over the ensuing years. One of the reasons for the degradation of certain tea lands was inadequate attention to environmental concern for sustainable development.

      With a shift in policy, a major process of reform commenced in the late 1970s, under the governments privatization strategy. Initially management of tea plantations was handed over to the private sector under 5 year management contracts. However there was no incentive for the private sector to make investments for long-term sustainable growth encompassing environment friendly management practices.

      Later majority ownership of plantations was transferred to the private sector, under 50-year-long term renewable leases. This stimulated long term investments in the sector, with environment friendly management practices, to achieve sustainable growth, with enhanced productivity.

      Plantation Managers became sensitive to long term sustainable growth and enhanced profits, as against short-term gains, with little or no conservation practices.

      Under a Plantation Sector Reform Project (PSRP) being implemented with financial support from the Asian Development Bank (ADB), privatized plantation companies are assisted to improve environmental conditions in their project areas and to increase productivity of tea lands, especially degraded tea lands, through crop diversification and other measures.

      Crop diversification entails, mainly the planting of perennials for sustainable growth with virtually no adverse impact on the environment, as against the planting of annuals (cash crops) hitherto carried out for short-term gain with adverse environmental impacts such as 'soil erosion'.

      For example, the forestry component in the project area is improved, by the planting of 'fuel wood, which could be used in the tea industry itself, and also by planting high value timber producing tree crops.

      This type of crop diversification is encouraged especially in degraded tea land as well as land with high sloping gradients, as tree crops bind the soil and prevents adverse environmental impacts through soil erosion. In addition to degrading of tea land, soil erosion causes the silting of downstream hydro reservoirs affecting irrigation of crops in the dry zone, and also the capacity for generation of hydro electricity.

      Under the PSRP, crop diversification with short term cash crops on commercial as well as degraded tea land is supported to enhance profitability, if planting is undertaken, with adequate measures to minimize adverse impacts on the environment such as soil erosion.