DOT Desk: vating more than the average land that is farmed during the minor (Yala) cultivation season, a minister told journalists on Monday. Agriculture Minister Mahinda Amaraweera said this came after price increases that followed recent food shortages, reports Xinhua. The minister said in the minor farming season, farmers cultivate 400,000 hectares on the average.

“But now it looks like about 470,000 hectares would be sown. As a result we may only need to import about two months of rice,” he said. Sri Lanka decided to ban the use of chemical fertilizer in April 2021, following which the agricultural output has declined sharply.

Food commissioner J Krishnamoorthy told the newspaper in an interview that her department had “just started the process” of asking the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) for “food bank assistance”. Ms Krishnamoorthy added that Sri Lanka was seeking around 100,000 metric tonnes of food in the form of donations or subsidised sales. The SAARC is a grouping of eight countries in South Asia.

It includes Sri Lanka and India, which is emerging as one of Sri Lanka’s biggest providers of aid.

Sri Lanka’s Food Commissioners Department and the SAARC did not immediately respond to BBC requests for comment.