Ceylon Tobacco’s role in the emergence of Sri Lanka’s cut flower industry

by ACB Pethiyagoda

Some years ago (in 2012) this newspaper carried an interesting article by Sunela Jayewardene on the book “Wild Flowers of Sri Lanka” by Aritha Wikremanayake. Perhaps this may not be the first book on the subject or last, as I recall seeing a book in the mid 1970s by I believe Mrs. Dorothy Fernando. How competently she dealt with the subject I cannot remember but do recall clearly the near perfect pencil drawings by her of many wild flowers.

In the early part of the last century the Department of Agriculture put out bulletins on topics pertaining to its duties such as the “Preliminary List of Pests of Cultivated Plants of Ceylon 1923” It also issued “A Manual of the Weeds of Major Crops of Ceylon”. Hence a document on wild flowers could reasonably be assumed to have been issued by those worthy dedicated scientists.

Interestingly, all the senior staff in the Department in 1923 consisted of Europeans – Stockdale, Petch, Hutson, Park, Gadd etc. The only Ceylonese were Dr. A.W.R. Joachim, Office Assistant (later Director of Agriculture and later still Director, Tea Research Institute of Ceylon) and J.N. Culanatharvalu, Chief Clerk. The Government Printer was H. Ross Cottle.

In those times and in fact even as late as around the 1960s, cut flowers were of very little or no commercial value. Cultivated flowers consisted of mostly roses, barbatans, arum lilies, gladioli and somewhat later anthuriums. These were grown mostly at high elevations for beautification of gardens and for vases indoors. Flowers were available on sale at malsalawas or better named malagiya salawas – the business places of undertakers now frequently calling themselves funeral directors!

By around the late 1950s Colombo had two or three exclusive flower shops, so also a co-operative of growers. One of the flowers shops specialized in white Cattleyas, highly priced by wealthy brides. Those who wanted them that badly were charged as much as Rs 500 a bloom! Just to give an idea of how expensive these were, one has only to recall that a gallon of petrol then cost Rs 7.50, a cigarette .08 cents, a coconut .75 cents, an egg .60 cents, a pound of white sugar .75 cents. There were then only a handful of such growers or fanciers who grew Dendrobiums and Vandas and made the occasional kill, all the while jealously guarding the paying hobby.

While this was the position in then Ceylon, in Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and to an extent in Indonesia, growers owned virtually acres in orchids bringing their produce in boatloads and trucks to buyer/ exporter warehouses. It was and still is big business among large numbers of producers, buyers and exporters. They had reached a stage when they were almost overproducing and had to cut costs of production to remain afloat.

One such method was by dabbling with mixtures of cattle and pig manure, urine, young coconut water and even dashes of tomato juice as they found the easily applied small quantities of chemical fertilizers too expensive! Additionally, in simple laboratories, hybridization was going on at a pace to attract and maintain the interest of buyers in Germany, Switzerland, Holland, France etc.

They produced blooms and sprigs with desirable characteristics such as floriferousnes – frequency of flowering, size, colour, texture and shelf life. Many results of experiments carried out in those homes and back gardens of the experimenters were remarkably successful, considering the simple inputs and facilities available at most times to the technicians with practically no formal training or scientific backgrounds.

In our country meanwhile, the few growers were like the proverbial frogs in the well keeping to themselves what little they knew. They did not have the initiative to go out and learn although funds to them were not a limiting factor.

In 1966 Ceylon Tobacco Co commenced on the development of ‘Navajeevana’ – a colonization scheme in Mahiyangana on 1000 acres of jungle lands leased from Government – an outstanding success which no private sector organization had before or after achieved. The company by then was managed by its first and only Sri Lankan Chairman/ Chief Executive, Mr. S.V. Wanigasekera who gave agricultural diversification a foremost place in the company’s activities.

Its sugar cane project in Haldumulla carried out for the first time in Sri Lanka with outgrower participation was another success. In under two years of commencement in 1973, that project had over 700 small holder growers cultivating over 1,200 acres in cane and processing over one ton of jaggery a day to satisfy demand when imported sugar was scare in the mid 1970s.

“Over a decade from the coming of the UNP Government in 1977 Ceylon Tobacco Co transformed itself, as it embraced a whole series of businesses which ranged from trading, financial services and agriculture to horticulture and bio-technology. Consequently, in 1979 CTC embarked on a major project to cultivate and market orchids which were among the rarest and most highly prized flowers of all.

“The intention was to develop the export of cut flowers and foster a new agro-industry which would earn foreign exchange. Orchid growing had previously been the preserve of a very elite social circle and it was hoped the new industry would benefit a host of small farmers and part time growers.”

To start off the cut flower industry with the participation of a large number of small growers the Company considered it useful to discuss that aspect with the then dozen or so known orchid fanciers. To a man they opposed the very idea declaring that orchid growing needed highly trained personnel to provide the needed care which ordinary growers could not give.

When told that the Company had by then trained about 15,000 growers in tobacco plant nursery management, cultivation and barn drying, the argument died down. From then on there was no looking back with an extensive nursery being established at Kalagedihena and visits being made to Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia for initial stocks of mother planting material.

Those opportunities of foreign travel were utilized to study the finer aspects of the business. A modern tissue culture laboratory, the first of its kind in the private sector, was set up at Kalagedihena, manned by highly qualified personnel to mass produce selected varieties of orchids. By 1982 there were 2,000 growers mostly in the Colombo, Gampaha and Kalutara Districts.

They were sold an initial stock of plants in three stages of growth – flowering, medium sized and small plants in thumb pots, and to guide them a team of 25 trained field officers visited them at close intervals. The early growers were granted a loan of Rs 3,000 each by the Bank of Ceylon and later a group called ‘big growers’ were granted loans of Rs 20,000 each to grow exclusively Aranda Christines.

Growers were required to sell their produce to the company which most did, while a few sold theirs to other florists who were setting themselves up in the developing market. Some of them, particularly in the Western seaboard from Chilaw to a little beyond Panadura are today exporters to Europe and the Middle East and suppliers of orchids to hundreds of local hotels, offices, shops and homes.

This briefly is the history of the commercial cut flower industry in the Island begun by Ceylon Tobacco Company and followed by others.

To conclude this fascinating story of the cut flower industry in Sri Lanka, an observation of the Hon Lalith Athulathmudali, Minister of Trade and Shipping (1983) follows:

“I was in the Kuwait Hilton the other day when they received a large stock of orchids. The entire lot came from Ceylon Tobacco Company. It was a matter of pride to say these orchids came from Sri Lanka.”

(All quotations are from Dr Sinharaja Tammita-Delgoda’s Tobacco, Agriculture and Land. This article by the late ACB Pethiyagoda, an ex-planter who joined Ceylon Tobacco Co. Ltd. Later in his career was first published in this newspaper in Feb. 2012)