The primary form of agriculture in Sri Lanka is rice production. Rice is cultivated during Maha and Yala seasons.

Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) has been an agricultural country since time immemorial. The chief occupation of the then Sri Lanka, was agriculture, and land use in ancient Sri Lanka had been mainly agricultural. People grew their own food and there was hardly any foreign agriculture food trade. The earliest agricultural settlements were in the river valleys in the northern and south-eastern plains and the main crop cultivation was paddy under rain-fed conditions. A main feature of the civilization in ancient Sri Lanka was the development of an irrigation technology. Thousands of small irrigation tanks of varying sizes and shapes, particularly in the Dry Zone provided water for paddy cultivation. Paddy was cultivated only in one season and during the dry season the lands were left fallow. Uplands were cultivated under Rained conditions with subsidiary food crops under a shifting cultivation system. Until the 19th century subsistence agriculture  continued to be the mainstay of the country.