The Department of Agriculture says that the amount of land where crops were damaged is 71 percent of the total cultivated land without paddy cultivation.
In addition to this, 100,000 hectares of paddy fields cultivated during the Maha season of that year were also damaged due to heavy rains and floods.
The Department of Agriculture also mentions that this situation affected the rapid increase in the price of vegetables in the first quarter of this year due to the large amount of damage to the vegetable crops due to the continuous rains received for about four and a half months last year.
Apart from this, another 23,874 hectares of land cultivated with vegetables and other crops were affected by pests and other diseases. That amount is 27 percent of the total damaged cultivated land.
However, in the month of April, vegetable and fruit cultivation has improved once again, so the harvest has increased by now. The Department of Agriculture also said that due to the favorable weather conditions especially in the months of February and March, vegetable and other crop fields have been very successful and therefore the prices of vegetables have decreased significantly.
The Department of Agriculture revealed the facts by releasing a report prepared by the Department of Agriculture regarding crop damage in the 2023/24 Maha season. This report was handed over by the Department of Agriculture to the Minister of Agriculture and Plantation Industry Mr. Mahinda Amaraweera.
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