Forced Transition to Organic Farming Fails in Sri Lanka*
Lessons world leaders can learn from the crisis
*Revised and re-posted for new subscribers.
The crisis in Sri Lanka has been widely covered in the press and the disaster was caused when the government banned synthetic fertilizer and required the country to go all organic farming, even as the agronomist and others involved in agriculture in Sri Lanka were excluded from taking part in that decision. Anyone who is involved in agriculture could have predicted the outcome, which is outlined extremely well in this article at foreignpolicy.com:
Faced with a deepening economic and humanitarian crisis, Sri Lanka called off an ill-conceived national experiment in organic agriculture this winter. Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa promised in his 2019 election campaign to transition the country’s farmers to organic agriculture over a period of 10 years. Last April, Rajapaksa’s government made good on that promise, imposing a nationwide ban on the importation and use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and ordering the country’s 2 million farmers to go organic.
The result was brutal and swift. Against claims that organic methods can produce comparable yields to conventional farming, domestic rice production fell 20 percent in just the first six months. Sri Lanka, long self-sufficient in rice production, has been forced to import $450 million worth of rice even as domestic prices for this staple of the national diet surged by around 50percent. The ban also devastated the nation’s tea crop, its primary export and source of foreign exchange.
For anyone who would like to be well informed, not only on the Sri Lanka crisis but on the problems with banning synthetic fertilizer in favor of organics, I highly recommend you read the entire article. Seriously, it is a short course in the importance of fertilizer in agriculture. If you’ve been reading my newsletter for long, you know the importance of synthetic fertilizer to food security.* There is a place for manure** (a.k.a. organic fertilizer) but it will never replace synthetic fertilizer if everyone in the world is going to be fed.
Unfortunately, world leaders who have absolutely no agricultural education or experience are making decisions based on wishful thinking that can have catastrophic consequences if they do not learn from the disaster of Sri Lanka.
There is no conceivable way that export sales to the higher value organic market could possibly make up for sharp falls in production. . . . The notion that Sri Lanka might ever replace synthetic fertilizers with domestically produced organic sources without catastrophic effects on its agricultural sector and environment is more ludicrous still. Five to seven times more animal manure would be necessary to deliver the same amount of nitrogen to Sri Lankan farms as was delivered by synthetic fertilizers in 2019. Even accounting for the overapplication of synthetic fertilizers, which is clearly a problem, and other uncertainties, there is almost certainly not enough land in the small island nation to produce that much organic fertilizer. Any effort to produce that much manure would require a vast expansion of livestock holdings, with all the additional environmental damage that would entail.
Sustaining agriculture in Sri Lanka, for both domestic consumption and high-value export products, was always going to require importing energy and nutrients into the system, whether organic or synthetic. And synthetic fertilizers were always going to be the most economically and environmentally efficient way to do so.
Again, I would highly recommend you read the entire article. You will have an understanding of why Sri Lanka’s experiment with organic farming failed, and you will be able to separate fact from fiction when you read things about sustainable agriculture.
Over-fertilization is a problem in some regions, but the answer to the problem is not banning fertilizer. The answer is the implementation of nutrient management plans on farms so the right amount of fertilizer is applied at the right time for maximum yields with minimum loss of nitrogen to the environment.
Raising the maximum amount of food on the smallest number of acres can prevent deforestation and promote better, more ecologically intelligent use of land for people and wildlife. Oh, how I wish world leaders would get that message!
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