I am grateful for comments on an earlier draft by Steve Biggs, Piers Blaikic, Barbara Harriss, Mick Moore and Benny Farmer.

¹ The setting up of the International Service for National Research Programmes (ISNAR) in 1981 as a further institution in the CGIAR system has explicitly reinforced this role.

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⁵ For a discussion of this issue, see Moore, M. F. ‘The State and the Peasantry in Sri Lanka’. Unpublished D. Phil. Thesis, 1981, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex.Google Scholar

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⁷ The livestock division has mainly been staffed by vets, whose primary concern has been animal health.

⁸ See Joachim, A. W. R., ‘Agricultural Research in Ceylon’. Presidential Address to the 4th Session of the Ceylon Association for Advancement of Science, 1948.Google Scholar

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¹² Economic crops being those that would be traded rather than consumed at the household level.

¹³ Abeyratne, E. L., Internal Memorandum, Department of Agriculture, Sri Lanka, 1948.Google Scholar

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¹⁹ D. Senadhira personal communication. Chandraratne, M. F. (1951) had, two decades earlier, noted the diversity of rice growing environments, the high degree of local specialization and stressed the need to study the soil-genotype complex as a unit and not to consider plant and soil separately (Recent Rice Research in Ceylon. Presidential Address to Section B, 7th Session of Ceylon Association for Advancement of Science.)Google Scholar

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²⁷ Indeed such indica – japonica hybridizations that are carried out now are mainly concerned with transferring into the japonica varieties desirable attributes of pest and disease resistance from the indica varieties. G. Khush, personal communication.

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³⁰ Leslie Peiris, personal communication.

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³³ Leslie Peiris, personal communication. Chandler, however, the first Director of IRRI, was later to comment on Moomaw's successful experience in Sri Lanka, An Adventure in Applied Science: A History of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI, Los Banos, Philippines, 1982) — a view that few Sri Lankans share.Google Scholar

³⁴ It has generally been the case that the selection of sites for agricultural research stations have all too rarely included criteria such as representativeness and relevance of the research site to actual farmers' conditions, a comment that Darling, H. was to make, Nature 264 (1976)Google Scholar, in reviewing Arnold, M. H. (ed.), The Namulonge Contribution.Google Scholar

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⁴⁰ A. T. M. Silva personal communication. Dr N. Brady, a later Director of IRRI was to comment favourably on the practical orientation of the research: Brady, N. C., Ishizuka, Y. and Wittwer, S., Report of a Review of Ceylon Agricultural Research Organisation and Operation (Ford Foundation, 1969).Google Scholar

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⁴⁶ It is perhaps significant that scientific personnel working in the commodity research institutes of the estate sector have always received better pay and conditions than those within the Department.

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⁴⁸ Moseman and Mclung (1974).

⁴⁹ The absence of such documents may well reflect both consistency and agreement between the Department of Agriculture and the Government. The major occasion on which policy documents were produced was when there was disagreement between the Departments of Agriculture and Irrigation. This will be discussed later.

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⁵¹ Objectives which have been dominant in current work on Farming Systems Research and Agricultural Research Policy literature.

⁵² There is, somewhat surprisingly, no major piece of work examining in totality agrarian policy in Sri Lanka since 1948.

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⁵⁴ D. S. Sennanayake was to talk of the regeneration and re-establishment of rural Ceylon on the land (1936 Agriculture and Patriotism).

⁵⁵ In his forward to the Mahaweli Projects and Programme in 1979 commented ‘it is my fond hope that following on the massive resettlement in the Rajarata (the ancient kingdom of the Sinhalese) which in effect will mark the return of the people to our ancient kingdom and homeland, our people will respond to the ancient civilisation which flourished in the Rajarata’.

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⁵⁷ Lanka Sama Samaja Party.

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⁶¹ This was an argument that a Commission of Review set up in 1963 to examine why the Agricultural Plan of 1958 had not achieved its objective was also to adopt.

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⁶³ A reflection of this was the move of A. T. M. Silva from being Director of Agriculture to being the Government Agent for Anuradhapura.

⁶⁴ It should be noted that the expansion in rice production between 1966 and 1970 took place on the basis of the H varieties and not on the new hybrids.

⁶⁵ They were essentially written by A. T. M. Silva and E. Abeyratne, indicating, as previous experience does, a strong influence by the Department of Agriculture in the creation of policy relevant to its own activities.

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⁷² A. T. M. Silva, personal communication. Morrison (1982) also cites the case of how a saline-resistant variety of rice, developed by local farmers was taken on as part of breeding stock and incorporated into the rice breeding programme at Bombuwela Research Station.

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