In Sri Lanka, Organic Farming Went Catastrophically Wrong
(foreignpolicy.com)
Comments (9)
sorted by:
Clever messaging to get you to buy-in to the corporate takeover of food production. Fear porn.
If they tried to farm organically on conventional farmlands, then they didn't account for the time it takes to transition over. Conventional farmland is mainly dead and toxic soil and organic farms will not thrive until after the soil has been fixed. There are also a million other things that may have gone wrong due to improper execution on their plan. Look to all the food forests going up here in america, that is how it's done. But it does take time to establish a stable organic farm.
Very True. There's a Korean technique called Jadam, which is a re-hashed ancient farming technique of re-vitalising soil with homemade micro-organisms. This doesn't happen overnight and is a lengthy process. Even on regular soil you might manage to 'fix' a couple of millimetres at a time. With soil that's been destroyed by drought and fertilizers and pesticides, it would take many years to achieve a similar crop. This is why they say to divide your land into several plots, say 9 in total and introduce organic on one of those 9 with each passing year. Hardly surprising that if everyone makes a 100% switch that yields will fall. The trouble with third world countries is they fail to look further than the end of their noses. Instead opting for instant gratification. If they stick with it now, then next years harvest will be more plentiful than this year, but they won't do it. Something is a bit smelly about this article tbh. It claims they have lifted the ban for coconut farmers? Coconut palms don't use pesticide or fertilizer. They are prolific in growth, even in just sand and if you know anything about palms, they are virtually indestructable!
I'm sure that article is hiding something, it feels like a hit piece with an agenda.
Not that I think Sri Lanka should have rushed headlong into a daft dogmatic centralised plan like banning fertilizers immediately. I wonder why the Sri Lanka gov would do something so likely to be destructive? If you want to make a change towards organic, it has to be done very gradually with the populus onside and lots of information feedback to see if it works.
Thank you CFR for asserting the dominance of our corporate overlords.
Again.
You can't just mandate "organic farming" and then expect it to work simply by means of outlawing fertilizer and pesticides.
You have to teach the farmers how to cultivate living soil and how to integrate animals into their land (chickens love to eat bugs, for example) and create bio SYSTEMS.
Look up "no till soil" on YouTube for a starter on this concept of healthy, living, regenerative soil that is much better for plants and produces healthier food.
Not to mention that it takes time to recover from all the damage done to the soil by industrial farming method.
Organic=Cancer
This pol gave them ten years to transition, in 2019, then suddenly clamps down in two?? It's his fault. Plus, there's a lot of learning to be done when switching over. This was in the words of Biden "ill begotten".