On October 31, 2021, the President of Sri Lanka ascended the podium at the Glasgow Climate Conference (COP 26). At the center of his speech was an initiative to save agriculture and public health from the harm of chemical fertilizers.
That class, even then, bordered on the absurd. Gutabaya Rajakapsa’s professorial appearance did not sit well with his record. 14 years earlier, at the crucial stage of the Sri Lankan civil war, he had been the defense minister in the government led by his older brother. Human rights organizations have blamed him for war crimes and massacres. There was something surreal in his pretense of teaching the world how to get rid of potassium nitrate damage in the fertilizer industry.
The president boasted of the great boldness of his government. Six months earlier he had imposed a sudden ban on the use of chemical fertilizers, pledging to move Sri Lanka to full organic farming within ten years. He repeated the explanations to the conference attendees: the damage to farmers ‘and consumers’ health and the aggravation of the climate problem. Rajapakasa added a spiritual spice to his lecture. As befits a Buddhist, he spoke of the Buddha and the 2,000-year-old tradition of “balancing ecological concerns with human needs.”
This was accepted in the minds of those present. Here that yes a developing country, which can try and dodge ecological concerns in the name of its right to continue to develop, pays a blessed attention to the human condition.
The President of Sri Lanka has returned home, to a worsening systemic crisis. Less than four weeks after his speech, he partially lifted the ban on the import of chemical fertilizers. Subsequently, the ban was lifted in its entirety.
Four months after his speech his regime began to collapse. His family, which ruled Sri Lanka, on light breaks, for 20 years, lost its positions of power one after another. Crowds took to the streets, expelling his prime minister brother from the capital Colombo, and finally occupying the presidential palace. He himself fled by military plane first to the Maldives and then to Singapore. From there, last Thursday, he sent his resignation, via e-mail.
The last $ 25 million
Sri Lanka is now a parable and wit, the perfect model of the failing country. This island nation, south of India, has gone bankrupt. It stopped paying its debts, and last Friday had $ 25 million in its central bank coffers, less than the cost of a single import day.
In the last six months, the price of bread has tripled and the price of rice has doubled. Most schools closed. Government ministries operate perhaps two days a week. Public transportation has dwindled to a minimum. Queues of days drag on at the entrance to gas stations, which tend to be emptied of the last drops long before the end of the queue. The poor can no longer rely on even one meal a day. The ambulances stopped working. Doctors advise people not to go to emergency rooms.
Sri Lanka has suffered a series of blows in the last three years. In April 2019, a massacre of Islamists in a Catholic church cost the lives of 279 worshipers, and landed a heavy blow on its most important source of income, tourism. Half a year later the corona plague began, putting an end to tourism from its core. Then, in April 2021, came the fertilizer cutting.
Within a few months, Sri Lankan agriculture collapsed. A country that has boasted since the “green revolution” of the 1960s of its ability to grow almost all the food it consumes, has been forced to pay more for rice imports than it would pay for fertilizers. The “green revolution” has vastly improved the state of agriculture in poor countries. To that revolution India owes its transition from full dependence on foreign graces to impressive self-reliance. India is currently a net exporter of rice.
Sri Lanka did not reach the status of an exporter, but managed to fulfill almost all its needs. Sri Lanka has two rice seasons, the “small” between March and September and the “big” between September and March. The lifting of the ban on fertilizers delayed the deadline. The combination of a critical shortage of fertilizers in world markets, combined with a depletion of cash in the state treasury, has reduced rice production in the “big” season by 40%.
The Green Revolution in Sri Lanka subsidized chemical fertilizers by up to 90%. It has put a million tiny farmers on their feet. It raised their incomes, it allowed them to hire manpower, and create jobs in the poorest areas.
What destroyed their kidneys?
So what led the Rajapaxa brothers (president, prime minister and finance minister) to gamble on organic farming? In his speech in Glasgow, the president hung the decision mainly on the damage the fertilizers caused to public health. Since the 1990s, “chronic kidney disease for no apparent reason” has spread in Sri Lanka (a medical characteristic whose English acronym is CKDu). In some areas of Sri Lanka, the disease is one-fifth of the population, especially in the agricultural sector.
The assumption underlying the ban on fertilizers was that they were the source of the disease. But it is not proof. The most likely source of the disease is irrigation water used for agriculture. The ban was imposed 25 years after the disease was identified. It is doubtful if anything justified the haste and lack of preparation. The brothers’ government did not take the results into account.
A few weeks after the ban was imposed, a group of local scientists strongly warned the government of the consequences. The Sri Lankan network’s website issued the warning on July 1, 2021. Scientists predicted a catastrophic 50% drop in tea production, which is one of Sri Lanka’s most lucrative exports (revenue of $ 1.3 billion a year); And a 20% to 50% decrease in a number of other industries, such as corn, potatoes and sugar cane.
One of the warning initiators told the BBC last week that he and his colleagues had begged the president to accept them for a call, “if only for half an hour.” They did not respond.
According to a BBC investigation, the pressure on the president to get rid of the fertilizers came from “medical professionals, as a Buddhist teacher and the private sector.” There were also associations that tried for years to make souls for the idea of organic farming. The brothers seem to have responded to the pressure because they were tempted to believe that stopping the import of fertilizers from abroad would save a lot of money in time of unpaid debts and distress in the balance of payments.
Tea production decreased by 40%
This shocking omission of course does not rule out the very idea of getting rid of chemical fertilizers. He rejects, however, the idea of trying to get away from them without preparation and without evaluating the results. Sri Lanka cannot switch to full organic farming for a number of reasons, centered on land shortages. On top of that, the conversion of the famous Ceylon tea to an organic format will drop the ground beneath its feet (“Ceylon” was the former name of Sri Lanka). The global market for organic tea is small out of the total exports of Sri Lankan tea. In any case, in the absence of fertilizers, tea production has decreased by 40% in the past year.
The monumental stupidity and irresponsibility of the Rajapaksa Civil War against chemical fertilizers was not the only reason for the fall of their regime, but was one of the important reasons. Wealthy consumers in the West will continue to pay a fortune for organic vegetables and fruits. It is doubtful that they will remember Sri Lanka’s poor farmers.
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