Sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind

The harrowing fertilizer crisis with farmers, who are a vital cog in the country’s food chain, being ploughed deeper into the mud have no relief in sight apart from worthless words being spewed out by government members. Words are no substitute for the much-needed fertilizers to nourish the farmer’s starved food crops. What he needs on an urgent basis is fertilizer, whether organic or inorganic and the insecticide to keep the weeds and insects away. The visuals we see every day from the rice-growing areas of the country of lamenting farmers are the consequences of the government’s arbitrary decision to impose a ban on the import and use of chemical fertilizer.

 Farmers say they should have been consulted and a proper methodology put in place prior to implementing overnight a previously untried change-over, which as is apparent has come to naught. Rice is the staple food of some 21.8 million Sri Lankans and is the livelihood of more than 1.8 million farmers with a large labour force being directly or indirectly involved in the food chain. We are into the Maha Season, which started in September and ends by March during the North-East monsoon but without the necessary fertilizer, paddy cultivation is bound to end up as a non-starter.

Amid countrywide farmer-protests and agitation against the government for starving them of much needed fertilizer, State Minister Shasheendra Rajapaksa told the Daily Mirror that the government had decided to airlift nearly 30,000 tons of Nano liquid fertilizer from India soon. But the question that begs an answer is why such hurried imports, airlifted at public expenses of course, if the initial decision to ban chemical fertilizers was properly thought-out and properly planned and effected in stages over a period of ten years as stated in the much-hyped ‘Vistas of Prosperity and Splendour’ manifesto. 

Meanwhile, in an article published in The Sunday Times on May 9, 2021, Dr. Saman Dharmakeerthi, Professor of Soil Fertility and Plant Nutrition at the Agriculture Faculty of the Peradeniya University, said the Cabinet had on April 29, 2021 approved a ban on the import of chemical fertilizer and other agrochemicals in the bid to become the first country ever to practice organic-only agriculture. The Gotabaya Rajapaksa government’s policy document titled the “Vistas of Prosperity and Splendour”, which has been mandated by nearly 6.9 million voters at the 2018 presidential election, states that Sri Lankan agriculture will promote and popularize organic agriculture during next ten years with the intention of protecting the people’s the health and the environment, which had deteriorated by the use of agrochemicals in conventional agriculture.

The Government claims that because of chemical fertilizer usage; soil fertility has been degraded, soil acidity increased, biodiversity reduced, and most of all, the yield and yield quality had also declined. It also claims that chemical fertilizer usage has resulted in water pollution and accumulated poisons in foods, resulting in greater incidence of cancer and Chronic Kidney Disease (CKDu) in Sri Lanka. Dr. Dharmakeerthi says he agrees that chemical nitrogen fertilizer could lead to soil acidification, while the other issues mentioned above are common to both organic and inorganic fertilizers if poor quality fertilizers are applied against the recommendations made by Crop Research Institutes. The argument that chemical fertilizers have not increased crop yields in a given soil crop-environment cannot be justified either and as such he says he is still trying to understand the other reasons for banning chemical fertilizers in Sri Lanka.

Dr. Dharmakeerthi, concluding his article says that rather than adopting such feasible strategies step-by-step, the government has banned chemical fertilizer import overnight. This could plunge Sri Lanka into a food crisis in the coming years by the lowering of land productivity. Therefore, he said the decision to completely ban chemical fertilizer usage needs to be re-considered without any delay. If not, the expectations of the 6.9 million people, including that of this writer, who endorsed the manifesto, will be shattered. 

It is a common sight these days to see farmers in the rice, fruit and vegetable-growing areas of Sri Lanka pleading with the government for a sufficient quantity of fertilizer to carry out their farming activities. They say they are not asking for higher salaries, luxury vehicles or luxury lifestyles but only to be provided with good quality fertilizer and nothing more.

Furthermore, it is difficult to understand as to why the government decided to arbitrarily ban the import of chemical fertilizer at a time when it was already struggling to escape from the tentacles of a ravaging pandemic and while being confronted with numerous other crises. The fallout from this shortsighted decision is akin to that of sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind.