Sri Lanka went full Organic. Now they're starving and angry

I'm not sure that "going full organic" is liberal ideology. It seems more to be anti-science / anti-technology ideology.

 

I don't quite equate going full organic as liberal ideology. Synthetic fertilizers do cause dead zones in bodies of water where habitat used to exist as a result of run off of fertilizer after it storms. It also does take time to turn a farmland that's had heavy use of synthetic fertilizer to adapt to organic growing measures. I mean it's not as though humanity hasn't depended on agricultural practices for thousands of years and the use of synthetic fertilizer are relatively recent in that time frame which is showing itself to be unsustainable over the long haul.

I don't agree that a full on ban of synthetic fertilizers was a good idea but I do agree with the spirit of it in attempting to transition at least middle class and above home owners to produce their own crops from their property through organic measures and to avoid just having bermuda grass as your landscape with a collection of invasive trees and shrubs that also run up your water bill compared to a landscape with native habitat in your region that better sustains wildlife and requires less watering.

https://www.csuchico.edu/regenerativeagriculture/bioreactor/index.shtml

I mean for the cost of some cattle panel, some landscaping tarp and a free chip drop of wood chips, you can create your own compost that'll be filled with microbial life that has demonstrated to assist in plant growth yields.



How you develop organic growing practice that are up to scale to feed an entire nation is another matter but it can be done at least on a small scale to feed a family and at least avoid having to go grocery shopping in the produce section.

 

The word organic with respect to food is complete bullshit and incorrect

 

Wait, they ban synthetic fertilizers and pesticides? Talking about going backward.

The US hasn't gone anywhere near this AFAIK. The US has banned some pesticides when they were found to be linked to bad things like brain developmental problems. Other than that, some want a label for "GMO" products. And outside of that, a good % of the public wants "organic" (thx to Marketing).

 

Sounds very Republican.

'Do things this way now!'

'but how?'

'Stop whining and figure it out!'

 

Its all about the execution

 

I think the more rational suggestions in agricultural practices nowadays are to avoid tilling soil once you've established your soil up to farmable standards, as tillage disrupts microbial life that tends to benefit plants and also causes soil run off when you get a heavy rain.

To also grow cover crops that re-introduce nutrients in the soil when not growing crops that can take a lot from the soil, heavy usage of mulch, or again killing cover crops to act as a living mulch to act as a barrier for the soil so the surface isn't exposed to harsh climate conditions year round.

To use drip irrigation around the plants root system instead of spraying water into the air which causes more water to evaporate, and is less efficient, but also can introduce fungal spore activity on the leaves of crops you're trying to grow when water lands on them, which would then encourage the usage of fungicide, which can disrupt your soil ecology as fungi tend to be more beneficial than harmful for plants in the soil and fungicides don't tend to discriminate what fungi they kill. Also the use of pesticides and fungicides just causes even more resistant pests and harmful microbial life which then calls for even more extreme methods of treating a problem that will always grow more resistant the next time it resurfaces.

Even the article from the OP at the very end mentions re-introducing microbial life that tends to benefit plants.

"In Sri Lanka, as elsewhere, there is no shortage of problems associated with chemical-intensive and large-scale agriculture. But the solutions to these problems—be they innovations that allow farmers to deliver fertilizer more precisely to plants when they need it, bioengineered microbial soil treatments that fix nitrogen in the soil and reduce the need for both fertilizer and soil disruption, or genetically modified crops that require fewer pesticides and herbicides—will be technological, giving farmers new tools instead of removing old ones that have been proven critical to their livelihoods. They will allow countries like Sri Lanka to mitigate the environmental impacts of agriculture without impoverishing farmers or destroying the economy. Proponents of organic agriculture, by contrast, committed to naturalistic fallacies and suspicious of modern agricultural science, can offer no plausible solutions. What they offer, as Sri Lanka’s disaster has laid bare for all to see, is misery."



I don't think anyone reasonable would ask for a full on ban of pesticides or fertilizers, but I do think implementing better grazing patterns to allow plant habitat to restore itself is a reasonable request, as is the usage of cover crops year round to at least have less need to use synthetic fertilizer is also reasonable, as well as implementing no till practices again to avoid soil run off, which you would think would be costly for farmers, as you need soil to grow don't you?

 

poor country got bamboozled into taking the hypocrites at The World Economic Forum literally

 

They mostly cant import due to inflation and existing debt they can't refinance because, unlike the US dollar, no one wants their currency for their foreign reserves.

 

Here's a good primer. Decreased crop yields are part of the problem, but not the only thing. I'm wondering if they were hoping for more loans in exchange for going all-organic.

 

Do they have shake shack ?

 

Here's a breakdown of the food they're missing out on (I watch food p*rn to get hungry before work):

 

You know, that bioengineering and gmo are not natural! Not fully organic!

 

I'm no Sri Lanka expert, but I heard about their issue yesterday. Organic food actually was never brought up.