Land Development and Extension Services

Land development and extension is the largest of the Authority's functional areas and the one most smallholders deal with. It covers everything to do with the state of the land and what grows on it: taking out old tea and putting in new, bringing suitable new land under the crop, holding the soil on sloping ground, getting fertilizer to the holding, and the field advice that ties all of it together.

The work is delivered through the regional offices and, beneath them, the 147 Tea Inspector and Extension Officer ranges that cover the tea-growing area. The officer for your range is the person who inspects your block, certifies the work at each stage of a subsidy, and advises on practice. Find them in the Staff Directory, filtered by district.

Tea is a long-lived crop, but not an indefinite one. A bush past its productive life yields less every year, responds poorly to fertilizer and gives leaf that is harder to sell well. Replacing it is the single most effective thing that can be done for the productivity of a smallholding — and the single hardest, because the block produces nothing for the years between uprooting and the first plucking of the young tea.

The replanting subsidy exists to carry the household across that gap. It is paid in instalments tied to the stages of the work: on uprooting, on planting, and on the establishment of the young tea. Each instalment is released after the Tea Inspector has inspected the block and certified that the stage has actually been reached. That is slower than paying a lump sum on approval, and it is deliberate: it is what keeps the scheme honest and what makes it possible to fund it at a rate worth having.

Talk to your Tea Inspector before you uproot anything. A block uprooted before inspection cannot be certified at the first stage, and the assistance for that stage is lost.

Fertilizer allocations are issued against the registered extent of the holding, at the price and within the window published in the issue notice for each district and season. Notices appear in the Announcements section as they are released, and subscribers to the fertilizer and subsidy alert category are notified. If the extent recorded on the register is wrong, have your Tea Inspector correct it before the next issue rather than after it — the allocation is calculated from the register, not from the application.

Most smallholder tea in Sri Lanka is on sloping land, which makes soil conservation part of land development rather than an addition to it. Terracing, drains, cover crops and the layout of a replanted block all determine whether the investment stays on the hillside. Conservation works are supported, and conservation conditions are attached to replanting approval where the slope requires them.

Application windows for the subsidy schemes are opened by circular and announced on this site. The Services section shows the current status of each — whether it is open or closed — alongside the eligibility conditions, the process, the documents you will need, the responsible division and the contact point.

Application forms for every scheme are in the Downloads section under Application Forms, and can also be obtained from any regional office or from your Tea Inspector. Completed applications are submitted to the regional office covering the district in which the land lies.

If an application has been with an office for longer than the stated processing time, contact the Regional Manager quoting your registration number and the date of application. If it is still not resolved, use the feedback form: every submission is given a reference number, routed to a responsible officer and tracked until it is answered.