Growth Performance of Rice Sector: The Present Scenario in Sri Lanka

AL Sandika* and SN Dushani

Department of Agricultural Economics and Extension, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Ruhuna,Mapalana, Kamburupitiya

Abstrsact

The Sri Lanka government is promoting the development of agriculture sector with the slogan of “Let us grow more to uplift the nation”. Therefore, this study was carried out to analyse the growth performance of rice sector, and to identify the appropriate model to predict the future trend of the sector in Sri Lanka. The study was mainly done based upon the secondary data. The growth performance was analyzed by considering mainly four variables such as sown extent, harvested extent, total production and productivity. Then, behaviour of different variables was tested by using scatted plot diagram with time. Based on the behaviour of the variable, different time series (TS) models were tested. Sown extent and harvested extent have not shown a strong relationship with time. Over the years average sown extent and harvested extent were 858.28 and 813.37 ha thousand, respectively. But total production (thousand Mt) and productivity (kg per ha) have increased significantly with time. Therefore, the responsible factor to increase the total rice production was increasing the productivity. Cubic model was the most suitable to predict the total production and productivity which were Y = 1557.82 + 173.52t - 11.17t2 + 0.24t3 (r2 = 89.51) and Y = 2227.67+ 210.13 t - 11.19t2 + 0.22t3 (r2 = 95.20) respectively. In this context, it is possible to meet future demand for rice through increasing the land productivity by adopting the best field practices.

Key words:Model, Production, Productivity, Rice

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* - Corresponding Author

Faculty of Agriculture, University of Ruhuna, Mapalana, Kamburupitiya, Sri Lanka

Copyright © 2007 by the Faculty of Agriculture, University of Ruhuna

Print ISSN 1391-3646 Online ISSN 2386-1533