It is sad that Sri Lanka’s 2021-22 case study is often used to justify not making any move towards Organic farming at all. 

Sri Lanka’s experiment should be used as a case study by governments HOW NOT to transition to organic farming, NOT WHETHER. 

FOREX crisis

The local religious tensions after the 2019 easter bombings and 2020 Covid Pandemic had severely reduced the tourism industry’s revenue by 90%. 

A few massive infrastructure projects funded by Chinese banks in the recent years didn’t generate enough revenue to justify their massive investments. 

Foreign remittance by Sri Lankan expats and migrant labourers had been reducing over the years because of the political climate and unfavourable exchange rates of the country.

In May 2021, after Sri Lanka’s forex reserves  shortage became a huge problem, they had to take drastic steps to preserve foreign currency. Not all of the foreign currency is available for imports – debt financing is the first priority for foreign currency outflow. 

Sri Lanka imports  more than 90% of its fertilizer requirement and therefore has a huge forex bill. A total ban on import of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides was a result of the need to reduce forex expenditure. The ban was not a thought out decision to transition to organic farming. 

Impact of Colonization

The global addiction for tea started from Britain’s trade with China. Cotton and opium grown in India was bought at very low prices and that is what funded the trade of tea with China. 

In 1875, after successfully starting a tea factory in Loolecondera, Taylor sent the first shipment of Ceylon tea to an auction in London. After that, there was no looking back. 

Tea was grown in China and in Assam, in India before that. The coffee plantations were replaced by tea in Sri Lanka quickly and within a decade by 1885, there was barely any coffee grown in Sri Lanka. Monocultures of tea plantations dominate the central highlands of Sri Lanka now : Nuwara Eliya, Kandy, Uva and Dimbulla to name a few. 

Impact of Liberalization and Neo-Colonization

After independence from the British, the tea trade didn’t flounder a bit. With the Sri Lankan economy now heavily dependent on the tea trade, it would have been a disastrous decision to move towards any other industry any time soon.  

In the 1970s, Sri Lanka was among the first few nations in South Asia to open up their economy to global corporations. What was once a local subsistence agricultural economy based on minimum external inputs suddenly saw the onslaught of high yielding varieties which are more responsive to synthetic fertilizers. 

The increase in yields reduced the need to decimate wild forests and grasslands to expand agricultural area, which was a huge positive. But we have decimated more pristine forests because of the excessive demand for products to fuel a wasteful consumerist lifestyle.

The impact of industrialization and mechanization of agriculture on climate systems is now being felt with frequency of extreme weather events increasing across the globe. No other industry is dependent on consistent climatic and weather patterns for its success than agriculture.

Monocultures and Fertilizer Subsidies

While there are several instances where local kings and princes exploited and stole produce from peasants, the scale at which the Europeans stole from South Asia was unrivalled. 

Monocultures which expansionist and exploitative European powers had encouraged to build trade surplus for their economies have now become the norm. Tropics are known for their dense rich plant and animal diversity. But we have now become dependent on a handful of crops to fulfil most of the calorie requirement of society. 

The fact that Sri Lanka failed so badly at conversion to organic farming is proof of how much soils have gotten depleted of organic matter because of monocultures of tea and paddy. Soils rich in carbon need lesser synthetic fertilizers. But to get carbon back into the soil, we need policies, incentives that encourage these practices and more people who can make this happen. 

Subsidizing fertilizers need to be gradually reduced to prevent their over use and reduce dependence on imports. If they are really effective, farmers will buy them even if they are expensive, but at a much lesser quantity. Farmers will figure out ways to use more local inputs such as crop waste, green manure, alley crops etc.

Lack of Resilience to Economic Shocks in Agriculture

The control of resources such as crude oil is concentrated with a handful of countries on which agricultural depends on completely. Without crude oil, neither can we operate tractors and harvesters nor can we manufacture urea, the most used macro nutrient. This oligopoly of control is what makes the system under-resilient and susceptible to macro economic shocks. 

A heavily interconnected and well distributed global system should actually be quite resilient to economic shocks like the pandemic. The Covid pandemic was not a black swan event – we have had several pandemics in medieval and modern history : plague, flu, cholera and HIV AIDS. Yet, the shock to the global economy was unprecedented because the actions needed to battle this pandemic were unusual and because power distribution is very scattered.

FUTURE OF AGRICULTURE

The need to move towards less-energy, less-fossil-fuel, less-water intense civilization has not been clearer with growing knowledge about climate change. The fact that we need to move towards organic farming, multi layer agroforestry, minimum tillage agriculture is a no-brainer. How we are to get there as a civilization is the more important question. 

It took us quarter of a century as a civilization to move from a agriculture style using local resources to a style completely dependent on external inputs. It will take us more time than that for us to move towards bio-diverse local-input-based organic farming enmasse given that the population is 4 times now. Wisdom across political parties, civil society, non-profits and businesses is needed to transition to organic farming slowly over the next few decades. 

This isn’t simply about replacing fossil fuel based fertilizers with crop waste and animal waste fertilizers. This isn’t simply about replacing broad spectrum possibly carcinogenic pesticides with pest deterrent formulations made at the farm. 

Whole economies need to be reorganized to become less import dependent. Food security will be in jeopardy during such unpredictable events.

We need more diversity and polycultures in our farms because they are the best strategies against proliferation of pests and diseases. 

We need more integrated ways of agriculture where all kinds of plant and animal life are nurtured in the same farm, reducing the need for synthetic inputs from the Neo-colonialists.

Regards

Sudhakar

9043824660

Visit our Online Organic Store