In May 2021, as the Indian Ocean island of Sri Lanka was experiencing a severe fiscal crisis during the COVID pandemic, the government legislated to stop all imports of conventional fertilisers and pesticides overnight.
Although the adoption of biological and organic solutions had been
suggested at various times since 2008, this had previously been considered as a
phased rather than an immediate replacement.
The net result was that the experiment was rapidly
withdrawn in November 2021, as crop yields of both staples such as rice and key
export crops like tea plummeted.
The Sri Lanka experience demonstrated that a more cautious
and gradual approach to biological alternatives is necessary so that
agricultural production and farmer livelihoods are not damaged.
Inferior imports
Various problems with the rushed transition were
identified in hindsight. Critical amongst these was the significant shortage of
domestic supplies of organic and biological fertilisers and pesticides to replace
chemical inputs.
This resulted in replacements of variable quality
being imported from China, India, and Lithuania, among others.Instead of saving
the exchequer money, the cost of imported inputs rocketed, while vital rice
supplies also had to be shipped to Sri Lanka from neighbouring India.
In defence of biologicals
Despite the botched transition described above, Sri
Lanka had a long history of speciality teas and spices grown to organic and
biodynamic standards. Furthermore, there had been various attempts to develop domestic
alternatives to chemical inputs. Subsidies had meant that smallholders had
often over-applied conventional products, particularly in rice fields, leading
to farmer illnesses and degradation of soil quality.
Several projects such as the use of municipal solids
and tea waste, algae and seaweed, compost, and animal manure are all underway
in Sri Lanka, but these are still largely at an early stage.
The future
The current president of Sri Lanka, Anura
KumaraDissanayake, comes from a rural background and is keen to explore and
encourage alternative forms of cultivation to improve agricultural production,
although he was extremely critical of the botched biologicals implementation
under the earlierpresidency of GotabayaRajapakse, who was overthrown after
widespread protests during the economic crisis, which resulted from tourist
income and garment exports being adversely affected during the COVID pandemic.
These novel projects include the deployment of
regenerative agricultural methods in tea production, as well as the development
of seaweed and algae and other bacterial based solutions in Sri Lanka.
Hopefully however the lessons of the 2021experience
have now been learned. In the United Kingdom, for example, transition to
organics is specified as a strict four-year period by certifiers such as the
Soil Association. And neighbouring India has recently tightened up its
regulations on biostimulants andbiofertilisers, for example.
In the meantime, as Sri Lanka ramps up domestic
biological and organic production, the use of hybrid and Integrated Pest
Management methods such be adopted. That way the devastating impacts seen in
Sri Lanka in 2021 would in future be averted.
Biography
Dr Alan Bullion is the author of ‘India, Sri Lanka, and the Tamil Crisis’and worked as an international agricultural journalist and editorfor 27 years. He is the publisher of many special reports on crop protection, fertilisers, and biologicals, and co-authored a report on Gene Editing in crops. He is also the joint co-ordinator of the Labour Food Security Forum.
