- To view the total cost of any meal, select it from the left side panel. Click more products to add them to the total cost.
- To view the prices of individual ingredients, head over to the ‘ingredients’ tab. Click to select from 120 ingredients that go into our food.
Sri Lanka is in dire straits when it comes to food.
We've never been agriculturally self-sufficient in living memory (we wrote about this here) and a sudden halt in chemical fertilizer sent crops and farmers into widespread disarray (we covered this here, here, here and here).
After our reporting, we decided that the best way to understand the phenomenon was to map price movements. Rehana had developed the Big Breakfast Index; with her help, we extended the concept, curating a number of recipes based on how much of what goes into a meal.
Methodology
The Department of Census and Statistics collects data on weekly average retail prices of roughly 120 food items from markets in the Colombo district. We set up an automated process that reads these reports, extracts and cleans the data, and sends it for categorization. The categories are based on the Nutrient Profile Model for Sri Lanka from the Ministry of Health; we've simplified them to be a little bit easier to understand.
The recipes are then applied, and this process gives us the data that drives the visualizations. What we end up with a weekly price index for almost all types of food in the country, going back to 2018.
Here's the data:
Costs of food changes based on many factors - lack of dollars to import certain foodstuffs, lack of of fuel, a lack of electricity to keep some industries running, and even an agricultural crisis unfolding due to a disastrous policy around fertilizer imports; combinations of yield, transport costs, import costs, supply and demand all play a part in this.
As is, we rely on many imports for even our most basic meals. For example, wheat - which we need for bread - is imported. Our beloved parippu, too, is an import; according to the UN COMTRADE database, in 2021, we imported approximately 1.3 million metric tons of wheat, at a little over $433 million. A large amount of both wheat and pulses come from Canada, India, and Australia[1]. As the Sri Lankan rupee fell compared to the dollar, these commodities became more and more expensive.
You'll notice spikes in tamarind, green chillies, dried chillies, garlic, onions, local potatoes, tomatoes and beetroot. The most recent data, as of the time of writing, shows this consistent pattern of local potatoes being more expensive (and sometimes completely unavailable) compared to a steady supply of imported potatoes.
Meat is getting increasingly expensive, with various supply chain problems (including chicken feed) affecting the industry. Likewise for fish, most likely due to the fisheries industry being hard-hit by the fuel crisis. [2]. Tinned fish and salayo occupy the bottom of the cost-increase hierarchy.
Milk has consistently been a dependency for Sri Lanka; we're New Zealand's biggest market for this stuff. During the 2021 Budget reading, former Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa stated that we spend around $300 million a year importing milk. Plans were announced to shift this to local production, including tax concessions for large investments. However, officials have noted that it may take up to a decade for local milk production to actually match Sri Lankan demand; this isn't something that's going to happen overnight. [3]
As for sugar, well, sri Lanka imported $306.04 million worth of sugar and sugar confectionary during 2021, according to the UN COMTRADE database. Lanka sugar estimated that 90% of sugar in the country is imported. Sugar exports are tiny in comparison - $6.86 million. [4]
Footnotes
[1] It's absolutely fascinating to see how other countries view us. In 2019, America considered us a potential export market for this stuff; the Australian government considers us to be the second most valuable export market for Australian lentils. From the same report: in Jan-Mar 2021 wheat exports to Sri Lanka from Australia were worth more than $70 million, a 2908% increase on the Jan-Mar 2018-2020 average (ABS 2021).
[2] Anecdotal data, but as many as 60% of fishermen were not be able to do their work right now. Small boats need kerosene and larger vessels need thousands of litres of diesel. The cost of ice has also increased (you need ice to keep the catch fresh). Here are reports from the Morning and from Newsfirst on the subject.
[3] However, this is easier said than done. Cows need large tracts of land for pasture. From the same article: experts have pointed out that imported dairy cows can produce more than 20 litres in accordance with their genetic potential. The lack of pastures and lands that can be developed as pastures, temperature and issues in water management, insufficient animal feed with the required nutrients, non-usage of modern methods in animal farms, and infertility of cows were identified as constraints for the enhancement of milk production.
The All Island Dairy Association (AIDA) notes that Sri Lankan producers cannot meet the demand for dairy in the country. The article is worth reading is full; there's a bit of a row over data in here.
[4] And of course, we have the sugar scam allegations. Followup audits showed sugar importers underpaying taxes to the tune of billions of rupees, and some posting profits over 1000%.
