Total ban on chemical fertilizers and pesticides: Is it viable?

The media reported, a few days ago the Presidential ban on agrochemicals from the next Maha season, apparently with a total Cabinet nod. 

The country is to go organic totally! At a media briefing, the President announced that instead of the chemical fertilizer subsidies the farmers will be paid cash donations. 

Basil Rajapaksa added that cash donations will be received without the hassle of red tape.  The President also proudly stated that Sri Lanka is going to be the first country in the world to go 100 percent organic. With the money farmers receive, they have to make their own organic fertilizer. 

The writer was informed by several high officials of the Agriculture Ministry and the Department that although the Minister of Agriculture nodded his head in approval of the decision, privately he was not concurring with it. Nor are many other ministers.

There was also wide approval of Buddhist priests and some extremists of the decision. The vast majority of the scientists are, however, aghast that such a decision has been rushed into. It is sad that learned Buddhist priestsmake wild remarks without an in depth understanding of the subject! These “toxin-free purists” are unaware that they inhale much more toxins than they ingest via food, and Sri Lanka is one of the countries in the region consuming the least quantities of fertilizer or pesticide. One of the priests supporting the decision in the media blamed that kidney disease of the Rajarata is caused by agrochemicals. He was not aware that many years ago research established that the cause was the intake of fluoride and magnesium in the hard water from dug wells on high ground. Those who drank water from the rivers, reservoirs or wells in the plains did not contaminate the disease!

Global agriculture and organic farming
‘Organic farming is a small phenomenon in global context comprising a mere 1.5 of total farmlands of which 66 percent is pasture (for the elite to eat organic beef steak! Of the balance, 19 percent is in arable crops and 8 percent in horticultural crops. 

Only 16 countries of the world have more than 10 percent of the land in organic agriculture, but in many of them bulk of the extents is in pasture. There has also been, marginal decreases in extents in India and China for want of organic fertilizers, some farmers reverting to conventional farming.

Several studies have shown that the world population supportable without synthetic fertilizer is only just over 50 percent of the total. Vaclav Smil, ( Distinguished Professor, University of Manitoba) in 1999  estimated that 40 percent of the then (1999) global population of  6 billion people were alive, thanks to the Haber-Bosch process of synthesizing ammonia, the raw material for urea fertilizer.

The President should have at least considered a five-year phased out programme, to move away gradually from conventional agriculture, training farmers in organic farming technologies, not that it will succeed. Sadly he is making the same mistake he did with the oil palm cultivation ban. There too he failed to seek the advice of at least the organization mandated for research and development on oil palm, the Coconut Research Institute. It would also appear that he has not had a meaningful discussion with the Department of Agriculture and other agricultural research Institutes before taking this high-handed decision. In fact some high officials in the Agriculture Department and Ministry lamented that their advice has gone unheeded. The country also should have a professional body like the planning commission of India with high calibre professionals and other experts to advise the government on national policy matters. 

Yahapalana failed Organic Agriculture Project
The Yahapalana government at the behest of President Maithripala Sirisena and vehemently supported by Ven. Ratana went pell-mell into organic farming under the so called ‘Toxin-Free Nation’ mission. They set up office at the Strategic Enterprises Management Agency (SEMA), and many organic farming projects were initiated across the country. VenRatana, however, did not appear to know the basic principles of scientific agriculture for, on one occasion, he contributed to an article in a Sinhala newspaper titled“ Kale wawennepohorayoda da?” (“Do forests grow with applied fertilizer?”)! Anyway he was a prominent figure seated with the President when the latter made the fertilizer policy announcement a few days ago.

In addition to the countrywide projects on organic fertilizer, an organic fertilizer manufacturing centre was set up at the Agricultural Research Centre ,Makandura. Two  organic fertilizer concoctions were also made by Ven. Ratana in a factory in Jayanthipura. As crops did not respond to these fertilizers the farmers who used them had surreptitiously applied chemical fertilizer as they had to sell the produce as the organic!  The offered technologies and support was hardly taken up by the farmers, and the project was a total failure, and before the 2020 Presidential Election, President Sirisena closed it down. Before rushing into organic agriculture, the President should have at least investigated what went wrong with the Yapahalana project. 

The Cuban example
The Cuban agriculture, as at present, has often been quoted as an example of the feasibility of switching over to organic farming or ecological agriculture from conventional. Cuba was in fact compelled to go organic.

That was a consequence of the collapse of its economy following the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1989 and its total suspension of aid to Cuba. Cuba was nearly totally dependent on USSR for its agrochemicals, fuel, agricultural machinery and equipment. Moreover, it had very favourable trade terms with USSR such as selling sugar to USSR at five times the world price!  The collapse of the Cuban economy drove the Cuban peasantry to near starvation with the per capita calorie intake dropping from 2900 to 1200 calories.

These circumstances saw the end of the high chemical input agriculture policy of Cuba , and in the proceeding  so called ‘special period’( see Table), major revisions to the land policy resulting in much  of the state-owned farmlands  being distributed among the peasantry.  Substantial emphasis was also placed on agro-ecological concepts of farming: the use of  nitrogen fixing  and other microbial technologies, bio-fertilizers and crop rotations. These approaches to some degree mitigated the decline in crop productivity in the absence of chemical inputs.. Fidel Castro himself was promoting these activities.  Sri Lanka should benefit from learning these technologies from Cuba. 

The concurrent development of urban agriculture where all cultivable lands in the cities and suburbs were farmed was unprecedented. The urban farms produced adequate fruits and vegetables for the cities. Perhaps the most admirable technology development was in biopesticides and other  biological control methods of pests and diseases. 

Cuba now has over 200 centres called CREES for the production of pest control microbial agents across the country, run largely by qualified children of farmers. Despite all these endeavours, it is evident  from the data in Table 2 that the nutrient supply was inadequate to produce optimal yields. 

The yield of rice, for example, a major staple of the Cuban diet, was comparable with that of Sri Lanka during the ‘Green Revolution period’ when chemical fertilizers were used. However, during the so called ‘Special Period’ when agroecological farming technologies were introduced and the ‘Reanimation Period’ ,when these technologies were in  full operation and stabilized, the comparative rice yields were lower than that of Sri Lanka. 

Similarly, yield of sugarcane, one of Cuba’s main export income earners, decreased considerably despite the new technology application and was  43 percent less in the 2008-2010 period as against the period of the green revolution, when chemical fertilizers were liberally used. 

Cuba had the large comparative advantage as against Sri Lanka in that it is nearly twice the size of Sri Lanka but has half its population, implying that its land-man ratio is four times ours. Of the agricultural soils, 40 percent are highly fertile. 

These facts tell a lot as to how Cuba survived the crisis and managed to feed its people in some manner despite the lack of chemical inputs. Over the last two decades, Cuba has gradually increased using chemical fertilizers and now consumes about 50kg/ha/yr (2016 data) as against Sri Lanka’s 138Kg. And Cuba has its own gyphosate manufacturing factory!

The emergence of chemical fertilizers
The transition from traditional agriculture where fertilizer comprised essentially farmyard manure (FYM) and green manures, to conventional agriculture(CF), as we know it today, took place in the mid 19th century with two ground breaking inventions , the synthesis  of soluble (super) phosphate and chemical nitrogenous fertilizer  by two great scientists. One was John Lawes(1814 to 1900), an Englishman, who was later knighted. 

The other  was a German, Justus von Liebig(1803-1873).  Lawes’ invention of soluble phosphate was considered as a one of the greatest inventions in agricultural chemistry. Liebig was an outstanding chemist and a professor in the subject. 

He discovered nitrogen as a plant nutrient, apart from many other inventions such as chloroform. In 1909, another great German scientist, Fritz Haber successfully synthesized ammonia by combining atmospheric nitrogen and hydrogen which revolutionized the production of commercial nitrogenous fertilizers.

These inventions and the rapidly growing knowledge then in plant chemistry lead to the substitution of natural dung with chemical fertilizer. The third important element, potassium, was provided largely by potash, a substance that had been known from antiquity. It has been said that without these inventions, the industrial countries of Western Europe could not have supported the dense population growth of the 19th century. 

Sir John Russell (1942) a reputed British Soil Chemist in an article titled British Agriculture states that: “it is difficult for us in this distance in time to recapture the feelings with which the farmers received the information that a powder made in a factory and applied out of a bag at the rate of only a few hundred weights per acre could possibly act as well as farmyard manure put on the land as dressings of tons per acre”. This is ironically the fundamental question that we should ask.  Is there adequate organic matter to meet the nutrient demands of crops, on a global scale today, if it was not so then?  

Excessive agrochemical use and environmental pollution
Conventional farming (CF) is blamed for environmental pollution, not that organic farming is innocent! Heavy metal pollution and release of carbon dioxide and methane, two greenhouse gases from farmyard manure are serious pollution issues with organic farming. 

In Sri Lanka and other third world countries, an overwhelming issue is the indiscriminate and overuse of agrochemicals. The case of serious phosphate pollution of water bodies in the Rajarata, due to profligate and won ton use of phosphate fertilizer is a classic example. The vegetable farmers in the hill country are applying 5-10 times the recommended doze leading to serious P pollution of water bodies downstream in the Rajarata. 

However, on the whole Sri Lanka is one of the countries with the lowest pesticide and fertilizer use. For example, as per a FAO study in 2016, whereas we were using 0.3 kg/ha/yr pesticide, the respective comparable figures are: 0.6, 1.0, 4.7 and 5.9 for India, USA, China and Japan!  More importantly, Sri Lanka has reduced its Class1 and 2 pesticides use by 98% and 42 percent respectively. 

Similarly, the World Bank reportedfertilizer use for Sri Lanka is only 138 kg/ha/yr whereas that for some other S.E countries are : 2704, 1777,  289 and  166 for Hong Kong, Malaysia, Bangladesh and India respectively .
With regard to pesticides, their judicious use with appropriate safety measures should greatly mitigate pesticide pollution. Some programmes in Sweden, Canada and Indonesia have demonstrated that pesticide use can often be reduced without loss of crop by as much as 50 to 60 percent. 

Over the last half century, there has been a gradual shift from highly toxic pesticides to less toxic ones; and the process continues. There is also now wider recourse to bio-pesticides and integrated pest management. The problem, however, is that the pests mutate into more virulent forms faster than the invention of remedies!
There have also been reports of pesticides detected in alternative (fake) crop protectants (so called herbal formulations) recommended for organic farming . Dr Naoki Motoyama (Tokyo University of Agriculture – 2012) has reported the detection of at least eight toxic pesticides including Abamectin (LD50 = 10mg/kg body weight), an insecticide, in the organic herbal formulations! 

In conclusion, the advantage with inorganic fertilizers is that the exacting requirements of nutrients to crops can be provided as individual chemicals or mixtures because crops differ in their nutrient requirements. 

On the other hand, the greatest benefit of organic fertilizers as against chemical fertilizers, is the improvement of soil physical, chemical and biological properties by the former which is important for sustained crop productivity. Its biggest disadvantage is availability. Appropriate combinations of organic and chemical fertilizers can also provide exacting nutrient demands of crops and is the best option.

Although theoretical claims are made that organic agriculture can feed the world, organic matter is a constraint and far more technologies such as microbial ones that can be widely applied need to be developed before that could happen. 

Judicious and safe use of agricultural inputs is also a critical need of the day. This requires comprehensive farmer education and training, and regular monitoring of the environment for pollutants for corrective action. Is Sri Lanka equal to the task?

The fact of the matter is that the government is in a financial crisis, for the debt to GDP ratio that stood at 94 percent in 2019 was expected to rise to 110 percent in 2020. It is projected to grow in the succeeding years, ending at 120 percent by 2023. The decision to ban agrochemicals and move to organics, saving fertilizer costs and subsidies, is largely obviously because of this economic crunch.