Fair compensation? Sustainability without sustenance?
You can't eat rupees, Rajapaksa.
Posted on 01/29/2022 6:54:58 AM PST by karpov
In Organic Disaster I wrote:
Sri Lanka’s President abruptly banned chemical fertilizers earlier this year in a bid to become 100% organic. The ban has resulted in reduced production and soaring prices that, together with declining tourism and the pandemic, have created an economic crisis.
Here is the latest update:
Sri Lanka has announced compensation for more than a million rice farmers whose crops failed under a botched scheme to establish the world’s first 100-percent organic farming nation.
…The government will pay 40,000 million rupees ($200m) to farmers whose harvests were affected by the chemical fertiliser ban, agriculture minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage said on Tuesday.
“We are providing compensation to rice farmers whose crops were destroyed,” he told reporters. “We will also compensate those whose yields suffered without proper fertiliser.”
The government will spend another $149m on a price subsidy for rice farmers, he added.
About a third of Sri Lanka’s agricultural land was left dormant last year because of the import ban.
A good example of central planning in action.
btt
Government fixing stuff is a surgeon with Parkinsons.
Did the Sorosite cabal put him in office?
Regardless of this abject failure, you can be sure there are U.S. bureaucrats who think we should try this here because we’ll get it right. In fact, I bet the govt. has already thrown millions of dollars at studying this.
It shouldn’t matter if nitrogen comes from a factory or a cow’s butt. It’s still nitrogen.
Last week, the government breached its own ban by importing from Lithuania 30,000 tonnes of potassium chloride, but called it “organic fertiliser”.
a govt solution to a govt created problem.
People can’t eat rupees. Next to wars, I believe central planning has killed more people. We’re going to see what Stalin did to the Ukraine and what Mao did to China repeated. It’s unnecessary and is the result of communist’s inability to think outside of the Marxist box.
Oh I think you will discover that for the last 140 years central planning has war beat hands down. It's really no contest.
The Khmer Rouge tried this.
Didn’t work.
L
“We are providing compensation to rice farmers whose crops were destroyed,” he told reporters. “We will also compensate those whose yields suffered without proper fertiliser.”
You are absolutely right. Central planning has killed FAR more people than wars.
When dictators want to reduce the population of those you believe are not helpful to your cause, starvation becomes a beautiful tool.
Surprise surprise
The politicians have never planted a garden
Food is overrated.
It’s not that simple and far more considerations than nitrogen. I engineer systems for farming and have been growing my own organically from compost for many years. Haven’t spent a dime on fertilizer and my plants are stronger and tastier than anything you can buy. In a closed loop system that is carefully managed from the start, organics definitely can work better and cheaper. I look at fertilizer prices and just shake my head thinking how much I saved.
However, switching existing commercial farms to organic is quite difficult and you will have many years of low yield while building the soil back which most people cannot afford. In a poor country with very limited land like Sri Lanka, I’m not surprised this failed. Most people in cities still landfill their organics so of course that is another barrier to more widespread organics. We simply throw out far more than we reuse.
In an organic system, instead of adding fertilizer granules, these salts are generated in very small amounts by the soil life from organic matter. Some metallic salts naturally only exist for a few seconds along a thin boundary layer surrounding the roots. Outside this boundary they quickly “rust” and cannot be used by plants. To get these compounds without organics, fertilizer companies must add chelates that do not exist in nature.
As the soil life breaks down organics and makes these salts, the plants absorb it and reward the life with sugars/nutrients in return. The plants use these rewards to communicate with the soil life and request whatever nutrients they need from the soil. If there is too much of a certain nutrient, the plants tell the soil life to dial it down. Or vice versa. This natural balancing of life is how plants have grown very strong into vast forests for millions of years long before humans existed.
Adding a quick boost of soluble fertilizer salts (or even too much “hot” manure) directly to the soil is not natural and far different from adding compost. It disrupts the soil life due to the faster changes in EC and PH. Many of the critters hate quick changes and die very easily. Over time, the soil life becomes more unbalanced and more salts must be added to compensate. Until you have very dead sandy soil that takes a great deal of fertilizer which is prone to runoff and destroying life in waterways. Including causing toxic algae that can kill fish and people. This situation is very common now in areas with heavy farming
So now they’ll be dying of starvation instead living with a full stomach to a ripe old age with evil chemicals in their bodies.
Environazis (and liberals in general) destroy everything they touch and especially the things they claim to want to protect.
Fair compensation? Sustainability without sustenance?
You can't eat rupees, Rajapaksa.
“Sri Lanka has announced compensation for more than a million rice farmers whose crops failed under a botched scheme to establish the world’s first 100-percent organic farming nation.”
But has the idiot that runs their government announced that they’ll be ditching their idiotic policy?
I didn’t think so.
Very interesting.
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