A Comparative Analysis between Sri Lankan and Indian Agricultural Policies towards the Exportation of Organic Products during COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 has been one of the unprecedented crises in the world. Even though the pandemic certainly plunged the world economy into a deep recession a green economy emerged during both the pandemic and post-pandemic period. As the green economy concept, organic agriculture was identified in that period. It is a sustainable form of agriculture both ecologically and economically. Sri Lanka and India as the major countries that follow sustainable organic farming and export its production in the Asian region, less of studies have been done to analyze the policies applied in the pandemic period in those countries. Based on the identified research gap, this study aims to compare both Sri Lankan and Indian agricultural policies towards the exportation of organic products during the COVID-19 pandemic period from 2018 to 2021 by identifying their performance in the world organic product export market, policy implementations and whether they contributed to the development of the exportation of organic products during the pandemic period. Mixed research design was employed in this study. Secondary data was used as the study was based on the agricultural policies of both countries. A comparative analysis was carried out to identify the effectiveness of the agricultural policies of both countries using qualitative data. Excel and descriptive statistics were used to show the trends and performance of each country in the organic product exportation market. It has been found that both Sri Lankan and Indian organic product exportation have been taken a significant place in the world export market of organic product during COVID-19 period while Indian governmental policies towards the organic product export market in the pandemic period were more effective than Sri Lankan policies. With the time period, policies of both countries have become weak in a way that the export of organic product has been declined or static by 2021 due to structural, functional and administrative issues. Hence, it is recommended that by providing better organic market facilities, adequate funding, training, education and awareness programs would facilitate the production of more organic products in sustainable way in both countries.