Sri Lanka’s economy is in free fall. Runaway inflation reached 54.6 percent last month, and the South Asian country is now headed toward bankruptcy. Nine in 10 Sri Lankan families are skipping meals, and many are standing in line for days in the hope of acquiring fuel.
The dire situation culminated last weekend in an uprising in which an estimated 300,000 protesters took over President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s home and offices and set fire to Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s home. Rajapaksa resigned after fleeing the country, leaving Wickremesinghe as interim president.
There’s no singular cause for the crisis, which had been building for years due to political corruption and right-wing authoritarian politics that weakened democracy. In April 2019, the crisis accelerated after suicide bombings at churches hurt the island nation’s critical tourism industry, which weakened its currency and made it more difficult for the government to import essential goods.
At the end of 2019, tax cuts slashed government revenue, while in 2020 the Covid-19 pandemic further decimated the tourism industry, with skyrocketing inflation pouring more fuel on the fire.
Pandemic aside, that’s not an atypical set of conditions for the collapse of a developing country like Sri Lanka. But in the spring of 2021, President Rajapaksa made an unusual decision: He banned synthetic fertilizer and pesticide imports practically overnight, forcing Sri Lanka’s millions of farmers to go organic. It proved disastrous, as a group of Sri Lankan scientists and agriculture experts had warned.
Justin Lane/Getty Images
According to one estimate, the president’s agrochemical ban waspoised to save Sri Lanka the $400 million it was spending yearly on synthetic fertilizer, money it could use toward increasingimports of other goods. But Rajapaksa also argued that chemical fertilizers and pesticides were leading to “adverse health and environmental impacts” and that such industrial farming methods went against the country’s heritage of “sustainable food systems.”
“There is a section of the Sri Lankan NGO society and civil society, which has been arguing for the spread of organic farming in Sri Lanka for quite a while. ... This has also been actively supported by many international groups,” R. Ramakumar, an agricultural economist at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in India, told me.
Instead of fixing the crisis, however, the move only worsened it.
“The organic policy was implemented to sort of ameliorate an ongoing crisis … ironically, what it did was that it ended up exacerbating the crisis,” Ramakumar said.
The agrochemical ban caused rice production to drop 20 percent in the six months after it was implemented, causing a country that had been self-sufficient in rice production to spend $450 million on rice imports — much more than the $400 million that would’ve been saved by banning fertilizer imports.
The production of tea, Sri Lanka’s literal cash crop — it’s the country’s biggest export — fell by 18 percent. The government has had to spend hundreds of millions on subsidies and compensation to farmers in an effort to make up for the loss of productivity.
Ishara S. Kodikara/AFP via Getty Images
While agrochemicals cause a host of environmental and public health problems, which in part inspired the ban, they also help farmers grow more food on less land, which is critical for small, developing countries like Sri Lanka that rely on agriculture for both sustenance and export income. Moving away from an agrochemical-heavy food system makes sense in a lot of ways, but the Sri Lanka example underscores the importance of being mindful of the economic, political, and social context of any reform.
Around five months into the ban, farmers were allowed to begin using synthetic fertilizers on tea and a few other crops while keeping the ban in place for others, but by that point, much of the damage was done.
The blinkered organic rollout accelerated an economic crisis long in motion, but it also crystallized the stakes of the debate over conventional versus organic farming, demonstrating just how critical high-yield crops are in economies still based largely on agriculture.
Sri Lanka, which only recently emerged from a catastrophic civil war, had been a bright spot in international development: In 2000, 17 percent of Sri Lankans were undernourished and by 2019, that figure fell dramatically to 7 percent, lifting around 2 million people out of hunger. The economic crisis that has now reached a boiling point, caused in part by the organic farming disaster, will horrifically, and ironically, undo some of that progress.
Agriculture is all about trade-offs
Synthetic fertilizer makes crops grow faster and bigger than organic fertilizer, such as animal manure, and pesticides control insect infestations and diseases that can destroy crops. Experts say the widespread adoption of the two agricultural inputs since the mid-20th century, known as the Green Revolution, helped lift countries like Sri Lanka out of grinding poverty.
Eranga Jayawardena/AP
“Sri Lanka started subsidizing fertilizers in the 1960s and we saw that rice yields tripled,” says Saloni Shah, a food and agriculture analyst at the Breakthrough Institute, a US-based environmental nonprofit that advocates for technological solutions. “[Sri Lanka] became self-sufficient in rice ... that’s huge for all Asian countries, from the food security standpoint.”
That resulted in much of the labor force moving out of agriculture and into higher-paying jobs, Shah says, a story that played out across the globe over the past 60 years. But the expansion of conventional agriculture hasn’t been without steep costs; agrochemical use is also rife with serious environmental and public health problems.
Pesticide exposure is linked to a range of health issues, including respiratory and central nervous system symptoms, and around 1 in every 8 suicides worldwide is done by ingesting pesticides, with especially high rates in South Asia.
When synthetic fertilizer and pesticides leach into waterways, they can kill off wildlife and poison drinking water sources, and their production and application emit high amounts of greenhouse gases and degrade soil.
Many organic agriculture advocates also argue that low-income countries’ reliance on imported chemicals from high-income countries strips them of their own food security and makes them vulnerable to the kind of agrochemical price hikes that Sri Lanka experienced.A majority of Sri Lankan farmers supported an organic transition, but wanted more than one year to do so — and they needed more support than they were given to switch to organic.
Pedro Ugarte/AFP via Getty Images
As horrible as the effects of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides are, they have to be weighed against the consequences brought to bear by crop yield loss: hunger, decreased export income, increased deforestation, and, if banned outright, as Sri Lanka has shown, political crisis. But there are ways to minimize the effects of agrochemicals without abandoning them altogether.
Minimizing the harms of industrial agriculture
The US-based environmental nonprofit World Resources Institute (WRI) says that it’s not enough to just maintain current yields — governments around the world need to increase yields per acre to feed 10 billion people by 2050, lest farmers be forced to clear more and more land to make up for lower yields, with massive environmental effects.
Meeting that inevitable demand — while also minimizing the environmental and public health issues brought about by agrochemicals while continuing to increase crop yields — is tricky but possible. Shah, the food and agriculture analyst, says a more sustainable approach requires making crops higher-yield through breeding, making nitrogen fertilizers more efficient, and instituting “precision farming” technologies, like drones and sensors, to more accurately analyze where fertilizer is being over- or under-applied.
A 10-year study in China, in which 21 million farmers were trained on how to better manage soil, water, and fertilizer, shows the progress that can be made. The program resulted in an 11 percent yield increase for maize, wheat, and rice, and a 15-18 percent reduction in nitrogen fertilizer use.
Practices popular among organic agriculture proponents would also help, like employing cover cropping, double cropping, adding organic fertilizer along with chemical fertilizer on fields, and planting trees and shrubs on farms, known as agroforestry.
Wendy Stone/Corbis via Getty Images
“I think that in the Western world, we can get lost in the organic/conventional debate,” Shah said. “Agriculture is the backbone of economic development — for livelihoods, for food security. … It should be less so about ideology and which one is better, but more so what combination of technologies, practices, and market conditions will be helpful to spur development and to empower farmers.”
But implementing any of these practices in the near future won’t be possible in Sri Lanka, given that they’d all require money the government doesn’t have.
“It seems like it’ll be a long road to recovery,” Shah added. “It’ll depend on what type of financial aid package they’re able to negotiate with the [International Monetary Fund]. And if they’re able to reduce some of the debt burdens.”
“I’m speculating now at this point,” Ramakumar, the agricultural economist, said, “but if they follow the voice of science and reason, then it is not an irretrievable situation ... But it depends on who comes to rule Sri Lanka and what policies they adopt.”
In time, Sri Lanka may get some relief from the tension of its agricultural trade-offs. According to the economic theory of the Environmental Kuznets Curve, once countries reach a certain level of per capita income, economic growth and environmental pollution can decouple as the country can afford to implement stronger environmental regulations and practices without sacrificing economic growth, like crop yields.
Decoupling the two is far from guaranteed, but some countries have achieved it. As Sri Lanka gets richer, it’ll be more able to prioritize the environment and public health without millions going hungry, but the current crisis — made worse by the sudden, hastily executed organic transition — has made that day farther away.
Millions turn to Vox to understand what’s happening in the news. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower through understanding. Financial contributions from our readers are a critical part of supporting our resource-intensive work and help us keep our journalism free for all. Please consider making a contribution to Vox today.
The government failed to increase domestic production of organic pesticides and fertilizers, or provide farmers with subsidies to buy these. The sudden policy shift wrecked crop yields. Rice, Sri Lanka's dietary staple that it used to produce adequately and even exported, saw average yields slashed by some 30%.
The scope of organic farming in Sri Lanka could readily be expanded to meet the demand for export-oriented products. This could help to resolve unemployment problems that afflict the country, and to generate much needed foreign exchange.
In April 2021, the Sri Lankan government announced its plans for a nation-wide transition to organic agriculture and ban on agrochemical imports aiming to guarantee citizens the right to 'non-toxic food'. The announcement was met with mixed reactions both within and outside of Sri Lanka.
The crisis is said to have begun due to multiple compounding factors like tax cuts, money creation, a nationwide policy to shift to organic or biological farming, the 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Sri Lanka.
Last year, in an attempt to boost soil health and halt the progression of a kidney disease killing local farmers that was linked by some sources to agricultural chemicals, the president of Sri Lanka, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, imposed a synthetic fertilizer and pesticide ban overnight.
One of the main problems of organic farming is that of timing. This does not concern all cases, but generally, organic produce and meats require efficient supply chains to reach the market quicker. The main difference between organic from conventional farming methods is using fewer chemicals throughout food production.
Organic farming methods like composting, mulching, and using bio-fertilizers will help promote healthy crop growth, as well as soil richness. Vermicomposting is another excellent method of introducing important nutrients into the soil naturally.
Conclusions. Organic farming yields more nutritious and safe food. The popularity of organic food is growing dramatically as consumer seeks the organic foods that are thought to be healthier and safer. Thus, organic food perhaps ensures food safety from farm to plate.
Malala Rajapaksha, Shutterstock. Last spring, Sri Lanka's President Gotabaya Rajapaksa put a ban on agrochemicals. His goal was an ambitious one: to transform Sri Lanka into the first nation with 100-percent organic agriculture.
Compared with conventional agriculture, organic farming uses fewer pesticides, reduces soil erosion, decreases nitrate leaching into groundwater and surface water, and recycles animal wastes back into the farm. These benefits are counterbalanced by higher food costs for consumers and generally lower yields.
Second test confirms the presence of harmful bacteria, which leads to the importation of the consignment being suspended. Thereafter, Sri Lanka's state-run fertilizer companies went to court, and the Colombo Commercial High Court issued an order preventing People's Bank from paying for the shipment.
All studies report that organic farming has a poorer yield, on average in the range of around 60-75% of the yield of conventional agriculture. Why so? Because organic methods starve plants, particularly a huge nitrogen deficit. They also allow pests and weeds that damage and kill plants.
An organic movement began in the 1940s as a reaction to agriculture's growing reliance on synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. The history of this modern revival of organic farming dates back to the first half of the 20th century at a time when there was a growing reliance on these new synthetic, non-organic methods.
Organic farming can be defined as a system of management and agricultural production that combines a high level of biodiversity with environmental practices that preserve natural resources and has rigorous standards for animal welfare.
Among different possible solutions to the crisis, probably the most commonly adopted are related to public spending, control of private institutions, taxation, public employment and private employment.
The 2022 Sri Lankan political crisis is an ongoing political crisis in Sri Lanka due to the power struggle between President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and the Parliament of Sri Lanka. It is fueled by the anti-government protests and demonstrations by the public due to the economic crisis in the country.
Low productivity of crop and animal products for which demand is rising. Poor match between food commodities that are promoted under agriculture development programs and those important for food security. Inadequate attention to agricultural diversification in favour of crops that have better income prospects.
The Rajapaksa government's decision to ban all chemical fertilizers last year to make agriculture 100 percent organic severely hit the country's farm production, especially rice production, forcing the reversal of this decision.
COLOMBO, Nov 24 (Reuters) - Sri Lanka rowed back on its goal to become the first country to fully adopt organic farming on Wednesday by removing the ban on the use and importation of chemical fertilisers after months of mass protests by farmers and a surge in food price inflation.
ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS OF ORGANIC FARMING. Agricultural production contributes to various environmental problems such as climate change, biodiversity loss, soil degradation, and water pollution (Foley et al. 2011).
Organic agriculture reduces non-renewable energy use by decreasing agrochemical needs (these require high quantities of fossil fuel to be produced). Organic agriculture contributes to mitigating the greenhouse effect and global warming through its ability to sequester carbon in the soil.
Organic farming avoids chemical pesticides and fertilizers and seeks to increase soil fertility through feeding soil micro-life with residues from life such as garbage compost and sewage, manure, plant residues, food processing wastes etc.
What's good: Organic farms provide higher biodiversity, hosting more bees, birds and butterflies. They also have higher soil and water quality and emit fewer greenhouse gases. What's not-so-good: Organic farming typically yields less product – about 19-25% less.
Sri Lanka had an estimated population of 21 million in 2017. Of the 8.1 million persons in the households, 6.4 percent were above 15 years of age. About 2.1 million were defined as agricultural operators, who were decision-makers in farming. Many members of the farming households were engaged in non-farming activities.
The main economic sectors of the country are tourism, tea export, apparel, textile, rice production and other agricultural products. In addition to these economic sectors, overseas employment contributes highly in foreign exchange, 90% of expatriate Sri Lankans reside in the Middle East.
The main determinants of inflation in Sri Lanka are the economic growth, exchange rate, government expenditure, money supply, oil prices and interest rates in the long run.
Still, organic farms and ranches in California are mainly concentrated in coastal areas, like near Chico and Santa Cruz. In the vast agricultural belt of the Central Valley, where almost half of the produce in the U.S. is grown, most farmers are still using traditional growing methods.
Organic farmers also use animal manure, certain processed fertilizers such as seed meal and various mineral powders such as rock phosphate and green sand, a naturally occurring form of potash that provides potassium. In some cases pH may need to be amended.
On May 06, 2021, Imports & Exports (Control) Regulation No 07 of 2021 was issued banning importation of chemical fertilizers, pesticides & herbicides (Finance Ministry of Sri Lanka, 2019 and 2020). On July 31, 2021 an import licensing requirement on chemical fertilizers replaced the import ban.
Despite an export ban of urea fertilizer from India, the Indian government, at the request of the Sri Lankan government, agreed to provide 65,000 metric tons of Urea to the crisis-ridden island country under the existing USD 1 billion Indian line of credit.
Organic can compete with conventional yields and outperform conventional in adverse weather. Small farmers using organic methods have huge potential to expand global food production. And only organic methods actively regenerate resources and protect the environment from pollution and toxic waste.
J.I Rodale, founder of the Rodale Research Institute and Organic Farming and Gardening magazine, is commonly regarded as the father of the modern organic farming movement.
More specifically, organic farming entails: Use of cover crops, green manures, animal manures and crop rotations to fertilize the soil, maximize biological activity and maintain long-term soil health. Use of biological control, crop rotations and other techniques to manage weeds, insects and diseases.
The aims for organic farming are: Conserving environment and natural resources, re-establishing ecological balance, encouraging sustainable agriculture, improving soil fertility, conserving flora and fauna, increasing genetic diversity, and putting an end to chemical pollution and toxic residues.
But in the spring of 2021, President Rajapaksa made an unusual decision: He banned synthetic fertilizer and pesticide imports practically overnight, forcing Sri Lanka's millions of farmers to go organic. It proved disastrous, as a group of Sri Lankan scientists and agriculture experts had warned.
Within six months of the ban, rice production in the country—a once very sufficient industry—dropped 20 percent, forcing Sri Lanka to import $450 million of rice to meet supply needs and surging rice prices rose nearly 50 percent.
Second test confirms the presence of harmful bacteria, which leads to the importation of the consignment being suspended. Thereafter, Sri Lanka's state-run fertilizer companies went to court, and the Colombo Commercial High Court issued an order preventing People's Bank from paying for the shipment.
Low productivity of crop and animal products for which demand is rising. Poor match between food commodities that are promoted under agriculture development programs and those important for food security. Inadequate attention to agricultural diversification in favour of crops that have better income prospects.
All studies report that organic farming has a poorer yield, on average in the range of around 60-75% of the yield of conventional agriculture. Why so? Because organic methods starve plants, particularly a huge nitrogen deficit. They also allow pests and weeds that damage and kill plants.
Over 30 percent of Sri Lankans are employed in the agricultural sector. Although Sri Lanka is a fertile tropical land with the potential for the cultivation and processing of a variety of crops, issues such as productivity and profitability hamper the growth of the sector.
As a small island and a developing nation, Sri Lanka is highly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change. Consequences of climate change such as temperature rise, rainfall variability and sea level rise are critically affecting almost all economic sectors of the country.
The main determinants of inflation in Sri Lanka are the economic growth, exchange rate, government expenditure, money supply, oil prices and interest rates in the long run.
The main economic sectors of the country are tourism, tea export, apparel, textile, rice production and other agricultural products. In addition to these economic sectors, overseas employment contributes highly in foreign exchange, 90% of expatriate Sri Lankans reside in the Middle East.
Sri Lanka's president Gotabaya Rajapaksa won the election in 2019 – campaigning on a green vision that included turning the country organic within 10 years. Then in April 2021, he made a bold decision to ban the importation of artificial fertilisers, pesticides, and weedicides.
On May 06, 2021, Imports & Exports (Control) Regulation No 07 of 2021 was issued banning importation of chemical fertilizers, pesticides & herbicides (Finance Ministry of Sri Lanka, 2019 and 2020). On July 31, 2021 an import licensing requirement on chemical fertilizers replaced the import ban.
Despite an export ban of urea fertilizer from India, the Indian government, at the request of the Sri Lankan government, agreed to provide 65,000 metric tons of Urea to the crisis-ridden island country under the existing USD 1 billion Indian line of credit.
Answer is Yes. The Organic way of Agriculture does yield good results than the advanced agriculture, in which we use chemical fertilizers, insecticides and pesticides.
The central feature of Sri Lankan cuisine is boiled or steamed rice, served with a curry of fish or meat, along with other curries made with vegetables, lentils, or fruits. Dishes are accompanied by pickled fruits or vegetables, chutneys, and sambols.
Disaster description. The significant reduction in agricultural production in Sri Lanka, compounded by the rising prices of fuel and basic food items, have made food unaffordable for a segment of the population, and the government has forecasted food shortages during the next months.
Introduction: My name is Frankie Dare, I am a funny, beautiful, proud, fair, pleasant, cheerful, enthusiastic person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
We notice you're using an ad blocker
Without advertising income, we can't keep making this site awesome for you.
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23844193/GettyImages_1235425295.jpg "Sri Lanka’s organic farming disaster, explained (1)")
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23844195/GettyImages_1240410401.jpg "Sri Lanka’s organic farming disaster, explained (2)")
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23844217/AP21328565093345.jpg "Sri Lanka’s organic farming disaster, explained (3)")
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23844221/GettyImages_1239105337.jpg "Sri Lanka’s organic farming disaster, explained (4)")
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23844245/GettyImages_525068026.jpg "Sri Lanka’s organic farming disaster, explained (5)")
