This followed successful discussions with President Maithripala Sirisena by tea industry stakeholders including Minister of Plantations Industries, Navin Dissanayake and the Chairmen of the Sri Lanka Tea Board, the Colombo Tea Traders’ Association and Tea Research Institute.
Roshan Rajadurai , Hayleys Plantations Managing Director and former Chairman of the Planter’s Association of Ceylon said that this was a very timely move. “This will give a window of opportunity for the industry to explore an alternative for Glyphosate with the Tea Research Institute,” he said.
He also said it will take more than two years to bring the industry back to its usual rhythm. “The loss incurred over the last three years is huge.”
He emphasized that Glyphosate is a harmless form of fertilizer and it is being widely used all over the world. “In India too it is being used in higher concentration.”
Meanwhile, Chairman Tea Small Holding Development Authority, K. L. Gunaratne said that one of the biggest issues they faced during the Glyphosate ban was the loss of crop and the additional labour charges for removing weeds manually. “This resulted in an additional 12% of expenses per acre.”
Meanwhile an official from the Colombo Tea Traders’ Association said the ban on Glyphosate was imposed in 2015; since then the industry suffered a huge loss, each year. “Since there were no perfectly suitable alternatives to replace it, the tea industry was compelled to apply other available herbicides, weedicides and chemicals to control the proliferation of weeds in plantations, which significantly affected the yield. The drop in production of crop, the tea industry incurred a loss of Rs.26 billion each year.”
He said that they were using Glyphosate on tea and coconut plantations for over 40 years without any issues.
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