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

I've been to Sri Lanka and it's a beautiful country but one that's been beset by problems since they got independence from Britain. This is the first I've heard of them going organic but I'm not surprised that caused problems. Something like that should've been phased in over time and a poor country like Sri Lanka shouldn't be used for such a large scale experiment given the risk of things not working out.

Also this isn't the first time that Sri Lanka had a big program that didn't work out. In the 70's they focused their education on the language of the ethnic majority Sinhalese rather than in English. That made it much harder for them to participate in the global economy and one of the reasons why Sri Lanka couldn't copy the back office and high tech boom that India did.

 

I'll watch the video but the main thing I remember about Sri Lankan food is that it isn't subtle. Most of the food is some of the hottest in the World and the desserts are very sweet. Also for anyone allergic to coconut nearly everything has coconut in it.

 

Economic crisis due to the pandemic, 2019 bomb attacks, huge inflation, big tax cuts, lack of fuel for essential services, and default on debt. Banning imports of chemical fertilizer was to limit currency shortages leading to crop failures, making the situation worse.

This wasn't some ideological push for fully organic, but a policy that the gov thought would prevent default. Mishandling by the gov. No wonder the public is angry and wants a new gov.

Also something about family dynasty governing this country ("running the nation's gov as a family business")


Sri Lanka: Why is the country in an economic crisis?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-61028138

The country doesn't have enough fuel for essential services like buses, trains and medical vehicles, and officials say it doesn't have enough foreign currency to import more.

This lack of fuel has caused petrol and diesel prices to rise dramatically since the start of the year.

In late June, the government banned the sale of petrol and diesel for non-essential vehicles for two weeks. It's thought to be the first country to do so since the 1970s. Sales of fuel remain severely restricted.

What happens when a country runs out of money?
As well as not being able to buy goods it needs from abroad, in May Sri Lanka failed to make an interest payment on its foreign debt for the first time in its history.

The country had been given 30 days to come up with $78m (£63m) to cover the interest due, but central bank governor P Nandalal Weerasinghe said it could not pay.


Two of the world's biggest credit rating agencies also confirmed Sri Lanka had defaulted on its debt payments.

Failure to pay debt interest can damage a country's reputation with investors, making it harder for it to borrow the money it needs on international markets. This can further harm confidence in its currency and economy.

Is there a plan to solve the crisis?
President Rajapaksa has appointed Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe as acting president in his absence.

Mr Wickremesinghe has declared a state of emergency across the country and a curfew has been imposed in the western province while he tries to stabilise the situation.

Sri Lanka's government has more than $51bn (£39bn) in foreign debt, $6.5bn of which is owed to China, and the two countries are in negotiations about how to restructure the debt.

The G7 group of leading industrial countries - Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK and the US - had said it supports Sri Lanka's attempts to reduce its debt repayments.


The World Bank has agreed to lend Sri Lanka $600m, and India has offered at least $1.9bn.

The Sri Lankan government has also been in talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) about a possible $3bn (£2.5bn) loan.

The IMF - which works with its 190 member countries to stabilise the world economy - said the government would have to raise interest rates and taxes as a condition of any deal.

It would also require a stable government to be in place, so any bailout may be delayed until a new administration takes over.

Acting President Wickremesinghe had already said the government will print money to pay employees' salaries, but has warned this is likely to boost inflation and lead to further price hikes.

He also said state-owned Sri Lankan Airlines could be privatised.

The country has asked Russia and Qatar to supply it with oil at low prices to help reduce the cost of petrol.

What led to the economic crisis?
The government has blamed the Covid pandemic, which affected Sri Lanka's tourist trade - one of its biggest foreign currency earners.

It also says tourists were frightened off by a series of deadly bomb attacks in 2019.

However, many experts blame economic mismanagement.

At the end of its civil war in 2009, Sri Lanka chose to focus on providing goods to its domestic market, instead of trying to boost foreign trade.

This meant its income from exports to other countries remained low, while the bill for imports kept growing.

Sri Lanka now imports $3bn (£2.3bn) more than it exports every year, and that is why it has run out of foreign currency.

At the end of 2019, Sri Lanka had $7.6bn (£5.8bn) in foreign currency reserves, which have dropped to around $250m (£210m).

Former President Rajapaksa had also been criticised for big tax cuts he introduced in 2019, which lost the government income of more than $1.4bn (£1.13bn) a year.


When Sri Lanka's foreign currency shortages became a serious problem in early 2021, the government tried to limit them by banning imports of chemical fertiliser.

It told farmers to use locally sourced organic fertilisers instead.

This led to widespread crop failure. Sri Lanka had to supplement its food stocks from abroad, which made its foreign currency shortage even worse.

 

I for one enjoy giving my children pesticides to own the libs.

This shitty argument is about as logical as when Ted Cruz blamed green energy for the winter freeze.

Touch grass with tinman.

 

Yeah, but how else can you score talking points on clutchfans?

 

Oh yeah it's very much a have/have-nots place. A girl I went to college with who's a friend of a friend is from Sri Lanka...and is incredibly wealthy. I'm pretty sure her Dad was in the government there before they moved to the US, and I think her family descends from the closest thing to royalty there (the equivalent of saying you're family came on the Mayflower, but with a significant religious prominence and hoarding of wealth).

 

More on the family - https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/05/11/rajapaksa-family-sri-lanka/

The Rajapaksas expanded funding for the military even in peacetime and engaged in a form of crony capitalism that likely enriched the family’s fortunes. They touted major Chinese-funded infrastructure projects — including a port in their family’s hometown of Hambantota — that not only turned into wasteful white elephants, but made Sri Lanka into one of the world’s leading exhibits of what happens when a nation gets indebted to Beijing.

The roots of the current crisis, critics argue, predated both the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. “No serious observer believed the country was going to be able to pay back the $29 billion in debts it owed over the next five years, or the nearly $7 billion in debt it owed this year,” wrote Amita Arudpragasam in Foreign Policy. “But Sri Lanka’s government, filled with Rajapaksa family members and loyalists, was buttressed by Sinhalese Buddhist supremacists, crony capitalists, the state-owned media, and some influential private media houses. It continued to gaslight its people.”​

What's about trump warning: another example of why nepotism is a huge no no and conflict of business interest is also a huge no no.

 

I think its a bit disingenuoius to dismiss all organic farming. Or compare a poor island country who seemed to do implement it overnight to a gradual implement in the US.

What we call "organic" now was the standard of farming for millenia.

But lets not let nuance get in the way of a good story. This reminds me of when my oil & gas connections constantly post about a tesla exploding

 

Also "organic" by the standards are govt sets at least isnt actually healthier or more natural. Its a great way to mark up your produce to woo-moms and liberals though.

Like I said earlier though, they were probably expecting a big bailout or grant from the dev community US hegemony comes in many ways. Although for those of you b****ing about it; youre really not going to like when we're not the only player in the game. Remember when everyone was b****ing about the CCP? And how they totally cared about Uighurs and werent just upset that NBA stars were pro BLM?

Well if the US loses its status as a hegemon, guess who's filling that vaccum? And what they implement is gonna be a lot worse than a corrupt Sri Lankan ****ing up agriculture.

 

I know a lot of people hate Globalization but Sri Lankans problems are a good example of what happens when a poor country turn inward from Globalization. That they focused their economy on domestic consumption including apparently in this attempt to go all organic was to do away with importing fertlizing, it seems like their economy wasn't diversified or developed enough to take a larger part in the global economy. As such their only sources of foreign currency where from tourism and natural resources like rubber and coconuts. Tourism plummeted because of the pandemic and rubber and coconuts aren't enough to build a thriving economy.

Following the end of the civil war if they had taken steps to open their econonmy like other Asian countries had things might be different for them.

 

A lot of the Sri Lankan's I've met in the US have very strong ties to the elite back in Sri Lanka. That's largely the nature of a Third World country. Many of the people you would meet here in the US are from wealthy families as they are the only ones who can afford to get out and / or to send their children to US colleges.

While most of the Sri Lankans I've met are the majority Sinhalese I've met a few who are minority Tamil. Some of them appeared to have ties to the Tamil Tigers who were the main rebel group who was fighting the civil war. When the 2004 tsunami hit much of the coast of the Island was devestated including areas that were under Tiger control. The Tamil Tigers refused to work with outside groups providing aid and even threatened aid groups. A friend of mine who is Sri Lankan Tamil told me her family could get aid to those areas but wouldn't go into detail how.

 

Reminds me of how the Good Friday Agreement only got done through back channels of the Irish-American community. My thesis is actually on the impact of diaspora populations on conflict resolution.

 

LOL I'm not promoting anything. You're the one constantly bumping the thread over some vendetta over organic food, which I don't even eat or purchase myself. As I said, most of what we consider organic here isn't actually all that different from other produce besides the price point. I even said in multiple posts that the transition in Sri Lanka was short-sighted and likely done with the hopes of securing loans.

You seem upset that it's a more complicated issue than just organic farming though. It's a corrupt place with a worthless currency and no foreign reserves left. The sudden pivot played a part, yes. That's going to happen anytime you decide to jump into something suddenly. That's what glasnost and perestroika did to the Soviet Union. That's also what happened when the US tried to turn Iraq from an isolated dictatorship to a parliamentary democracy in the span of a year. It doesn't mean that democracy, freedom of the press, or the free market are some crackpot ideas we need to throw out.

I also don't think you understood the analogy I was making with O&G.

 

Issue isn't organic farming. Issue is trying to make a dramatic change instantly instead of bit by bit.

 

@MojoMan - see what my people the supervillains have done - again.

 

Everyone can see. And this will be a cautionary warning to other national leaders who naively may have been inclined to try to curry favor with the leaders of this truly awful group of people.

Rather than this being a celebration of a WEF led "climate change" related success, it has become a horror show and truly epic disaster, for all to see.