Crops in crisis

Tuesday, 8 June 2021 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

For the second time in four months, the Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture has resigned from office. Rohana Pushpakumara, who has held the position since February, vacated his post citing personal reasons.

The resignation comes amid a massive fallout from the Government’s lightning ban on agrochemical fertilisers that experts have warned could threaten Sri Lanka’s food security and livelihoods. Rice prices across the island are soaring, and farmers are already warning of lower output and higher prices of vegetables and fruits in the coming months.

Acres of cultivable land have already been abandoned because of fertiliser and pesticide shortages. The opposition has accused the Government of trying to plunge Sri Lanka into a famine.

Approximately 25% of Sri Lankans are employed in the agricultural sector. The primary food crop is rice, which is also the primary source of carbohydrate for millions of citizens. Tea, cultivated in the central highlands is a crop heavily dependent on agrochemicals for output, and a major source of the country’s foreign exchange.

The process to ban chemical fertilisers should have been a gradual one, most fertiliser researchers and agriculture experts concur.

The Government ban on chemical fertilisers which increase crop production by up to 50% comes amid a global pandemic. While the coronavirus has upended lives and livelihoods and the way we interact as societies all over the world, governments have put domestic food security and supply chains at the top of their policy agendas.

If ever there was a moment for experimentation with food production, it is not while Sri Lanka grapples with a third wave of the coronavirus, dozens are dying every day, and a countrywide lockdown for three weeks and counting has already made food stocks scarce.

Too many times already, the Government has been forced reverse ad-hoc decisions made in the heat of the moment. From the ban on cattle slaughter to the ban on the face-veil, to a host of other policy decisions, the Government has been forced to backtrack after it faced pushback.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has vowed that he will not change his mind on ending the use of chemical fertilisers to grow essential food stocks and key export crops in Sri Lanka. Making the case for the ban, he said it had cost $ 221 million in 2019 to import chemical fertilisers for agriculture. But now experts are warning that his decision to ban chemical fertiliser overnight could cost the country upwards of a billion dollars, from the import of organic fertiliser to the loss of production for export crops.

This would be an unsustainable drain on the country’s dwindling foreign reserves. Export crops will likely fall by 30-50% because of the ban, with organic fertiliser resulting in far lower yields. If the Government sticks to its guns, it could bring the tea industry to its knees.

Undoubtedly, organic fertiliser is the healthier, more sustainable alternative for cultivation. The Government claims it will make Sri Lanka the first country in the world to eliminate chemical fertilisers, a lofty goal indeed. Unless the transition is better planned and executed however, it may well become the first country in the world to bring famine and pestilence upon a people in the middle of a deadly pandemic.