• Heavily subsidised sprinklers, low-interest loans aimed at protecting harvests  
• Irrigation upgrades, piped water to selected regions as dry spell threatens food supply and prices

The Government is channelling subsidies and concessionary credit into micro-irrigation equipment, irrigation upgrades, and groundwater infrastructure as it moves to shield agricultural output, and with it food supply and prices, from an El Niño-driven dry spell expected to run into early next year.

Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Land, and Irrigation Secretary D.P. Wickremasinghe told The Morning Business that the ministry was distributing sprinklers and drip irrigation systems on a large scale under its climate-resilient agriculture programme, with equipment for highland crop cultivation being heavily subsidised.

The ministry has also introduced concessionary loan schemes to help farmers install such systems. “Anyone can obtain them at very low interest and install them,” Wickremasinghe said, adding that the ministry was also funding tube wells in vulnerable areas, upgrading existing irrigation schemes, and extending pipe-borne irrigation to selected regions.

“We are introducing methods that suit both the decrease in rainfall and other factors,” he said.

Big onion growers are among the targeted beneficiaries, a crop where domestic shortfalls translate directly into foreign exchange outflows. According to the Department of Agriculture, Sri Lanka spends approximately Rs. 25 billion annually on big onion imports. Central Bank statistics show the country imported 212,720 MT of big onions in 2024.

This dovetails with a wider effort to lift local production. In August, the Department of Agriculture launched a programme to produce half of Sri Lanka’s annual big onion requirement locally, with the country consuming around 320,000 MT a year, promoting modern cultivation methods to raise yields and reduce production costs. 

Drip systems have also been part of donor-backed recovery efforts, with 43 drip irrigation systems handed over to big onion farmers affected by Cyclone Ditwah in the Anuradhapura District in May, under a Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) initiative.

The urgency stems from the weather outlook. The World Meteorological Organization said in early September that El Niño had been firmly established by mid-August, putting the likelihood of it persisting through December 2026 to February 2027 at close to 100%. For Sri Lanka, the pattern typically brings heavier rainfall in October and November, followed by a sharp decline from December through April.

A prolonged dry period would hit the latter half of the current Maha season, the country’s principal paddy season, raising the risk of lower yields and upward pressure on food prices. To limit that exposure, Wickremasinghe said that cultivation had been brought forward and less water allocated to the tail end of the season, which he said would save “two or three rounds of water” and help preserve reservoir storage for the following season without excessive groundwater extraction.

Water reserves entered the season under strain. In August, the Department of Irrigation reported that major and medium reservoirs had fallen to around 36% of capacity nationally, with Ampara, Batticaloa, and Trincomalee recording levels below 25%.