Small Investors For Polytunnel Agriculture in the Northern Province

By Jekhan Aruliah

Nirojan comes from a family of farmers. Born in 1990, his parents farmed two acres of banana and chillies in Killinochchi. Like hundreds of thousands of others during the Sri Lankan Civil War they became IDPs (IDP, Internally Displaced Persons, refugees in their own country). Streams of people fleeing first from their homes and then again from camps they fled to, running from the fighting. Spending two years in Mallavi, two years in Mullaitivu. Then from 1998 to 2012 the family settled in Trincomalee where the parents ran a small business selling water from the Kanniya Hot Springs. These geothermal hot springs are said to have been created by Ravana King of Lanka, of the Ramayana legend, striking the ground with his sword. The water is believed to have therapeutic properties. It was after over 15 years displacement, in 2012, the family was able to return to Killinochchi.

Nirojan had continued his education taking A’Levels in Trinco and an HND in Agriculture at Vavuniya School of Agriculture. In 2019 he completed a BSc Agriculture from Jaffna’s North Lanka IIT.  That BSc was an external degree, he was working while he studied for the degree.

Nirojan’s career started in 2014 as a Field Technical Coordinator for Hayleys Agriculture. Then he joined the government sector, first with NAQDA (National Aquaculture Development Authority), followed by the Northern Province Department of Agriculture where he rose to become the manager of a 120 acre farm in Theravil Mullaitivu. Followed by roles as Subject Matter Officer for farm machinery and paddy in Mullaitivu, then as Agriculture Instructor in Karavedi near Point Pedro Jaffna. He built great personal hands-on experience.

There is a reason I give this long background of Nirojan, from farming family to BSc Agriculture to roles in agriculture around the Northern and Eastern Provinces. Nirojan is not someone who only learned from books.  Not only from academic text books, nor just from the marketing brochures of a salesman. Nirojan has mud on his hands from extensive practical experience around the Northern and the Eastern Provinces.

In 2023 Nirojan took advantage of the Government’s offer of 5 years no-pay leave, offered when the Sri Lankan Government was going bankrupt struggling to pay its own staff. Since then he has been focusing on his company Northern Modern Irrigation Jaffna (Pvt) Ltd , providing equipment and consultancy for drip irrigation and polytunnels.

From supplying and installing micro (e.g. drip using minimum water) and macro (e.g. rain guns spraying larger quantities of water) irrigation systems, and providing farm management and consultancy services.

Nirojan provides consultancy for building and running farms. He can find the land, assess it with soil tests and water availability. He will judge running costs and availability from electricity to labour. Nirojan will recommend crops: a mix of fast yielding (e.g. chilli, pepper) to provide cashflow to invest in longer term crops (e.g. pomegranate, cashew, mango, coconut). I asked Nirojan one of the hardest questions I could think of: how to protect crops from monkeys. Nothing is fully proof from those agile fellows, he explained a good level of protection comes from clearing the land for 20’ on both sides of an electric fence.  That 40’ wide clearing leaves no trees to jump from and land on, so the monkeys go off looking for lower hanging fruit elsewhere. I asked Nirojan: if I was a Diasporan who wanted to invest Rs10million (approximately £25,000, US$32,500 all at December 2025 prices and exchange rates), what could I get? Nirojan said land with direct A9 road (the main road from Jaffna going South to Kandy) frontage would be too expensive to buy as well as equip, plant and start up. But go off the A9 down a side road a few minutes, I could get 2-3 acres and put a 4,000 square foot polytunnel fully equipped with micro irrigation. Then start growing higher value crops. Enough working capital in the Rs10m that should be enough to last until the farm is generating revenue to support itself if all goes well (2025 prices).

Nirojan took me to meet one of his clients, Theepan from Norway who by chance was in Jaffna for me to meet. Theepan comes to Jaffna for a couple of weeks a few times a year to check on his farm.  Theepan left Jaffna when he was 10 years old in 1996, due to the war. He was brought up in Norway, married a native Norwegian lady and has two young daughters. Theepan told me he works two jobs in Norway. During the day his main job as an engineer in a power plant keeps his family in comfort. At night he works as an electrician earning money to invest in his ancestral farmland in Jaffna.  Theepan found Nirojan on a YouTube video. With Nirojan he has setup two large polytunnels, one is 4,000 square feet and the other 3,000 square feet. He also has outdoor crops including dragonfruit. I saw and I was impressed.

The phrase “If all goes well” should not be forgotten. Success is not assured. Risk is still there. Primary is employing a good farm manager who can effectively control a small team and deal with the expected and most of the unexpected. Risks not in the farm manager’s control include market price and demand for crops. And insurmountable ‘acts of god’ such as the cyclone and floods of November 2025.

Nirojan had actually started his business informally from 2016 selling equipment from Facebook. Later in 2019 he incorporated a company, with his brother and father. His brother has since moved on now running his own tourism venture Mithus Travels offering guided tours and vehicles. In 2023 Nirojan changed the name of the company to Northern Modern Irrigation (Pvt) Ltd. Nirojan’s friend Jeyarajan Nadarajan, a senior officer with an iNGO active in the rural communities, has been informally advising Nirojan for several years. Together they continued to update me in this interview on the game changing benefits of polytunnels in the North.

Polytunnels are widely used in Sri Lanka though less so in the Northern Province where it is mistakenly thought the dry climate makes them inappropriate. Polytunnels are prominent in the hill country, areas like Kandy and Nuwara Eliya, where they are used for strawberries, cut flowers, lettuce etc. Polytunnels in the Northern Province are more rare, missing a great opportunity. They enable crops to be grown to export quality and allow selection of high value varieties that are not viable in the open air. Grow-bags, cocopeat and vermicompost, are cheap and plentiful for use in the polytunnels. High value crops that can be grown include nutmeg, vanilla pods, nelli (gooseberries), strawberries. Grown in a protected environment to the size and the taste and blemish free as needed for export.

Polytunnels enable lucrative farming on small half acre (21,780 square feet) lands. High value crops are protected from heavy rain and high temperature that can wipe out a crop in a day. A 4,000 square foot polytunnel can be managed, they tell me, with just 2-3 hours effort a day.

Jeyarajan commented there is a great need for processing and other facilities. Investments include cool rooms to store produce, machinery for pulping, flash freezing and packaging. There was a time the currently defunct USAID was an active supporter for these investments. Many other iNGOs too have reduced their funding.

Now the need and the opportunity is even greater for private investors.

You can contact Nirojan on mobile +94 76 323 4503 and email jaffmicroirrigation@gmail.com, https://www.northernjaffnamicroirrigation.com/

( — The writer Jekhan Aruliah was born in Sri Lanka and moved with his family to the UK when he was two years of age. Brought up in London, he graduated from Cambridge University in 1986 with a degree in Natural Sciences. Jekhan then spent over two decades in the IT industry, for half of which he was managing offshore software development for British companies in Colombo and in Gurgaon (India). In 2015 Jekhan decided to move to Jaffna where he is now involved in social and economic projects. He can be contacted at jekhanaruliah@gmail.com — )