Abstract:
Rice is the staple food of approximately 20 million inhabitants in Sri Lanka. Being a crop which
contributes to the Sri Lankan economy, with a huge portion, it is very important to be aware of the
future fluctuations in paddy production. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to forecast the
paddy production in Yala and Maha seasons. The annual paddy production data obtained from the
Department of Census and Statistics from 1952 to 2015 in Yala and Maha seasons were used to
forecast the paddy production for next years. The best fitted forecasting model in Yala season was
ARIMA (3,1,1) and that for Maha season was ARIMA (2,1,1). Being a rain-fed crop grown in
different agro-ecological regions, paddy production largely depends on the climatic factors.
Accordingly, the study also aims to identify the impact of climatic factors such as rainfall,
temperature and pH value on paddy production in Kurunegala district. The annual data of above
climatic factors were obtained from the Department of Agriculture in Kurunegala district from
1971 to 2017. Correlation and step-wise regression procedures were used for this analysis and it
was found that the mostly affected climatic factor for paddy production is rainfall.
