Food Security and Dietary Diversity among Conventional and Organic Tea-Smallholders in Central and Southern Sri Lanka

Keywords: Dietary Diversity, Food Security, Tea Smallholder Livelihoods, Sri Lanka, rural environments
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 69

Abstract

Nethmi S. Bathige, Macalester College, 1600 Grand Avenue, Saint Paul, MN 55105.
E-MAIL: nbathige@macalester.edu.
In Sri Lanka, smallholder tea producers grow 70 percent of the country’s tea and bring in significant export earnings. However, when the country moved towards a more liberalized economy in 1977, growing cash crops such as tea for exports increased. As a result, there was a cut-back in subsistence agriculture as farmers made space to grow more commercial crops. This research treats tea smallholder households as a unit of study. It looks at how economic status (average income and wealth rankings), level of subsistence, and method of tea farming (organic or conventional) have implications on food security and dietary diversity. I used data collected in the summer of 2021 from 47 organic and 67 conventional tea smallholders in 6 rural communities of Southern and Central Sri Lanka. My preliminary findings show that organic farming is associated with greater dietary diversity among tea smallholders than conventional farming. I will also examine how the country’s recent ban on imports of chemical fertilizers used by conventional tea farmers has impacted their dietary diversity and food security outcomes. Furthermore, I examine how the smallholder tea sector has felt the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the looming economic crisis in Sri Lanka.