Sometimes one question captures an entire industry shift Recently, I had a conversation with a senior planter from Malaysia. More than 25 years in palm oil. He did not open with theory or assumptions. He asked one simple question: "Did you check the data? Is the trend going up or down?" That question stayed with me. Because in that one question, he captured exactly where agriculture is heading. Not toward dashboards. Not toward technology for its own sake. Toward evidence. To

Productivity didn’t decline overnight. It stalled in transition. For decades, Sri Lanka stood tall among plantation economies. Tea, rubber, coconut—and later oil palm—were once benchmarks of efficiency, quality, and global relevance.Yet today, Sri Lanka’s plantation productivity tells a different story: flat yields, rising costs, shrinking margins , and increasing dependence on protection rather than competitiveness. Meanwhile, peers didn’t stand still. Countries like Malays