Exporting the apes

Initiating negotiation with China to export 100,000 apes or relavus is a bold and revolutionary move which is agriculture and people friendly 

Suppose I wanted to initiate a cattle farm with 100 cows only for milk. What shall I do if 50% of the offsprings happen to be male calves? Would it be possible for me to feed the male calves and maintain them until they die? Also a situation may arise to remove the old cows when they stop producing milk and replace them with new cows. Should I retain and maintain the 100 old cows that have stopped producing milk and become dry until they die? If the income that the farm could earn by selling them is estimated to be Rs. 10 million, would it be possible to forgo such a large income and pursue the farm by maintaining the dry cows which is going to be a burden? 

Sri Lanka has not been able to realise its dreams of achieving self-sufficiency in liquid milk because of the stupid practice that Sri Lanka has followed regarding the production of meat for whatever reason. How big is the compensation paid by Sri Lanka and the country’s dairy farmers for that? Haven’t the country’s obsolete and outdated ideas and attitudes about meat consumption led to creating a sick society due to protein deficiency which is caused by low content of protein which is one of the essential elements of a healthy and balanced diet? Weren’t there political leaders or political parties in the country that have attempted to correct those backward attitudes that have led to the impoverishment and the failure of Sri Lanka? 

There are two important lessons that we can learn from India on this subject. India is a country that consumes less meat. It has the largest number of vegetarians in the world. But it has a different food culture that is rich in taste and nutrition. Even a person who is not a vegetarian could lead a healthy and nutritious life with vegetarian food available there, which consists of great flavours and a wide range of wholesome dishes. But, the condition of the people in Sri Lanka who depend solely on vegetarian diets is pathetic when compared to India. If vegetarianism that would ensure a healthy lifestyle is to be promoted, it is necessary that a suitable food culture dedicated to preserving the essential nutrients and taste of food at least to a certain extent, must be established. If not, the lives of the people may become a tragedy. 

There is an important lesson we can learn from India in the subject of meat. Although the majority of people in India do not consume meat, India occupied the fourth place in the world beef exports in 2020. Brazil, which held the first place claimed 23.50% of the total beef export trade that year, while Australia, which held the second place claimed 13.66%, the United States of America held the third place with 12.41%, while India held the fourth place with 11.88% share. In that year, India earned $ 3.18 billion from beef exports. Even if the people of Sri Lanka do not want to eat beef, the country could have promoted beef industry for export markets; and if an attempt had been made to make the country self-sufficient with milk while promoting beef industry as well, it would certainly have proved to be a practical and effective endeavour that would yield a profit commensurate for the investment made. 

If Sri Lanka could learn from its current state of failure and awaken its discretion and sense of judgment, it could at least be happy for the lessons learnt despite the huge loss incurred by the deep crisis it has fallen into, at the moment. If there are items among the things that we don’t make use of, for whatever reason, but could be sold to other countries, we should not hesitate to make use of the opportunity. That is one of the most important lessons we should learn from India.

New export space

Probably I may be the only commentator who has spoken in public persistently and for a long time about the great damage caused to agriculture by wild animals, including the apes (relavus) and monkeys, and the policies that should be adopted to arrest the situation. During the presidency of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, in an article written and published about the damage caused to agriculture by wild animals, I made an appeal to him to explore the possibility of dispatching the relavus and monkeys to China using the friendship ties Sri Lanka has developed with China. In my opinion, initiating negotiation with China to export 100,000 apes or relavus is a bold and revolutionary move which is agriculture and people friendly. If the population of relavus is presumed to be 30 lakhs, and at least 15 lakhs could be sold to China or other countries, it should be done. If this deal could fetch a good price, it can be considered as a big export space open for Sri Lanka. 

The world consumes many kinds of animals. There are many countries that eat insects including cockroaches (1,900 types of edible insects have been identified). China, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Japan, America and Mexico are the examples that can be cited for that. The World Health Organization says that consuming edible insects would be an alternative to the problem of protein deficiency. The people of Liberia, Congo, Cameroon, Sudan, Brazil, Mexico, Cambodia, China and Vietnam consume all the animals that fall under the broad category of Apes which they consider as a delicacy. Some people in remote villages of Sri Lanka do not eat monkey flesh, but they do eat flesh of relavus. China, Vietnam, Korea, Philippines, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and African countries can be considered as countries that consume the meat of animals that fall under the canine category. 

Before World War I, countries like America, France and Germany also ate dog meat. China kills 10-15 million dogs a year for food and the practice of eating dog meat in China goes back to 2,000 years. Vietnam can be considered as the country which has the highest per capita consumption of dog meat. In Vietnam 5 million dogs are being killed annually. It is 2.5 million in Korea. Crocodile meat is also a popular meat item in America, Australia, Indonesia, Korea, Philippines, South Africa, Hong Kong and Thailand.

We should not mock at the food habits of other nations. We must be used to bear with them. In 2013, I wrote a long article under the title “801st Man”. It states: “A policy in food traditions that tends to look down upon those who eat things that we don’t eat could lead to disagreements and conflicts. The children of the category of 801st Man should be trained to endure them and look upon them with a sense of dispassion.” 

Imagine a situation where your child is having breakfast in a hotel and he notices a group of people enjoying their breakfast at another table in front of him removing the shell of a boiled snail just like the way we remove the shell of a boiled egg. If the child cringes at the sight of the snail developing a nauseous feeling in him, and he tends to vomit, it is unavoidable that he falls into an uneasy situation. Perhaps, it might even make him sick of the country where he was supposed to live. Therefore, it is important that the children should have the ability to bear such situations. 

Snail is a delicious food for them as much as eggs are delicious for us. In a country which has a community of mixed people who are accustomed to different food habits and traditions, it would be possible to avoid inconveniences and conflicts and live in harmony and mutual respect for each other if we could instil discipline in them to look not only on the matters of ethnicity and religion, but also at different food habits and traditions with a sense of dispassion. If Sri Lanka, which is in a failed state, wants to be recovered from that situation and turned into a developed country, it is important that we get rid of the outdated attitudes and adopt an economy that works with more emphasis on export products. If it is necessary to improve the income earned from agriculture, the damage caused to crops by wild animals should be brought down at least to a level of 10% from the current high level of 40%. The damage caused by wild animals has reached such a level due to lack of control over the population of wild animals that had been harming crops for a long time due to various reasons.

Restricting the population of wild animals 

There may be occasions where countries are compelled to take strict measures to control the population of wild animals. Kangaroo is the national animal of Australia. The human population of Australia is 25 million and its kangaroo population is 48 million. The number of kangaroos killed in 2019 alone was 1.57 million. The number of kangaroos that Australia has destroyed to control the kangaroo population in the last 20 years has been 90 million. The unpopular tough decisions taken by the government to control wildlife are very important for the good of the country. They lead to the good of the country as well as the good of the farmers. According to the estimates by the Department of Agriculture the number of coconuts destroyed by relavus, monkeys and squirrels per year is 200 million. Its value may be around Rs. 15,000 million. Removal of six selected animals: Peacock, Relava, Monkey, Rock Squirrel, Porcupine and Wild Boar from the list of protected animals is an important step taken by the Government in relation to wild animals that damage crops. Now the farmers have got the right to hunt those wild animals that harm the crops. It is not clear whether they have been given the right to possess, transport and sell the meat of the hunted animals. That right should also be given so that the flesh of the hunted animals will be available for sale in the open market. The demand for wild boar meat is huge among the people of Sri Lanka.

A system of leasing the guns owned by the Government with a few rounds of ammunition through village workers or otherwise for a short period like two days can be introduced. The Government can also use it as a new source of income. Making the flesh of hunted animals a popular food would serve as a solution to the lack of protein content in the diet of the rural population, which has become a major health problem. Exporting apes (relavus) in bulk is important because people in Sri Lanka do not eat their flesh despite they eat flesh of the monkeys. 

The human-elephant conflict in the country should be resolved in a similar way. As I have already pointed out some time ago, the maximum number of elephants that can be sustained in the forests reserved for elephants is 2,000; but now the number of elephants in them is more than doubled. Consequently, the human-elephant conflict and the destruction caused by elephants have grown to a maximum level. It would be possible to take an accurate inventory of the number of elephants that can be maintained in the forests of Sri Lanka and adopt a policy of selling the excess to foreign countries. Exporting elephants to foreign countries is not an unfamiliar occurrence for Sri Lanka and it has the potential to generate a substantial income and reduce the damage caused to both sides of the human-elephant conflict.

It is through a reform program aimed at reconstructing the fragmented social system and the disrupted political system in addition to the restoration of the collapsed economy that Sri Lanka will be able to overcome the crisis it is facing now and become a developed country. If the paddy lands in the wet zone can be effectively used for export crops and farming activities (shrimp farms, fish farms, duck and goose farms, buffalo farms, etc.) while rice required for the country is produced in the dry zone, perhaps the income of the farmers could be tripled.