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Where a push to become world's first 100% organic farming nation has led to catastrophe: It turns out that organic farming is not something that one can flip a switch to accomplish
American Thinker ^ | 01/31/2022 | Thomas Lifson

Posted on 01/31/2022 7:21:14 AM PST by SeekAndFind

The green agenda often backfires when governments embrace it either as a means of placating militant environmentalists or as a half-assed attempt to take a shortcut to some sort of utopian future where evil petrochemicals no longer are used.  We see plenty of examples of the former, where Americans are paying far more at the gas pump because Biden shut down the Keystone Pipeline and is hobbling domestic oil and gas production, and where Germans are shivering and electricity prices are soaring because coal and nuclear power plants have been shut down.

But the latter path also carries disaster in its wake, as Sri Lanka has discovered.  Al Jazeera reports:

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa had imposed a total ban on agrochemicals in May [2021], saying he wanted to make Sri Lankan farming 100 percent organic.

That announcement was putting lipstick on a pig — a financial crisis.

Agricultural chemicals such as fertiliser were among the imports banned last year as authorities tried to save dwindling foreign currency reserves.

But it turns out that organic farming is not something that one can flip a switch to accomplish.  It takes a lot of preparation and work to make it succeed, including knowledge and skill, which ordinary farmers, directed from above, may not have and may not be interested in acquiring.  I am not against organic farming, but I appreciate the care and effort that are necessary to make it work.  And even in the best of hands, yields often fall.  That's why organic vegetables cost more.

So, as was predictable:

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. "


(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: bidenvoters; fertilizer; food; governmentcontrol; organicfarming; rice
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1 posted on 01/31/2022 7:21:14 AM PST by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

Its basically antibiotics, the haber-bosch process, and chemical pesticides that allowed the world to go from about 1 billion people in the 1800s, to 8 billion now.

Remove those things, and humanity goes back to 1 billion. It will be ugly.


2 posted on 01/31/2022 7:38:20 AM PST by PGR88
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To: PGR88
Remove those things, and humanity goes back to 1 billion. It will be ugly.

Oooh! You are making this liberal heart beat wildly! A slaughter of seven billion people! Ooooh, I'm getting so excited!

3 posted on 01/31/2022 7:43:19 AM PST by 17th Miss Regt
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To: SeekAndFind

Consider that in the US our prodigious agricultural production is fueled by diesel power. Diesel tractors plant the crops, diesel powered combines harvest the grain and diesel trucks haul that crop to market. Diesel powered trains haul that grain and that environmental darling corn ethanol. Calls to end the use of fossil fuels could lead to widespread starvation.


4 posted on 01/31/2022 7:43:48 AM PST by The Great RJ
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To: PGR88

Obviously they didn’t have a sufficient number of solar panels and wind farms in place before embarking on their project.


5 posted on 01/31/2022 7:44:16 AM PST by who_would_fardels_bear (This is not a tagline.)
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To: SeekAndFind

The president of Sri Lanka has already proved to be a tyrant.

Just force everyone to go poop in the fields, or carry their poop to a central facility which will transport it to the fields. Fertilizer provided, problem solved.

I wonder if I can sell this advice as an advisor to his government?


6 posted on 01/31/2022 7:50:46 AM PST by wbarmy (I chose to be a sheepdog once I saw what happens to the sheep.)
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To: who_would_fardels_bear

“Obviously they didn’t have a sufficient number of solar panels and wind farms in place before embarking on their project.”

In my state thousands of acres of productive farmland on rolling hills is being bulldozed flat for huge solar farms. The bare soil underneath flows into streams during heavy rains, turning them from crystal clear to brown muddy effluent.

Meanwhile there are thousands of acres of asphalt paved parking lots in the growing urban areas consuming this electricity which could be covered with solar panels overhead. If the green advocates took this approach, farmland and forests would be preserved, the environment would not be harmed with new soil erosion, and cars parked under the solar panel covers would be shaded.

Isn’t it ironic green development is resulting in the environmental plunder the environmentalists complain about. More progressive hypocrisy.


7 posted on 01/31/2022 7:55:24 AM PST by Soul of the South (The past is gone and cannot be changed. Tomorrow can be a better day if we work on it.)
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To: The Great RJ

—yep —

I am always amused by the use of diesel equipment to grow corn , to be converted into ethanol to dilute gasoline with, making a fuel with less energy content—


8 posted on 01/31/2022 7:58:49 AM PST by rellimpank (--don't believe anything the media or government says about firearms or explosives--)
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To: PGR88

I think 500 million is their stated goal.


9 posted on 01/31/2022 8:02:05 AM PST by Seruzawa ("The Political left is the Garden of Eden of incompetence" - Marx the Smarter (Groucho))
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To: SeekAndFind

Lysenkoism lives!


10 posted on 01/31/2022 8:04:12 AM PST by E. Pluribus Unum ("Communism is not love. Communism is a hammer which we use to crush the enemy." ― Mao Zedong [FJB])
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To: SeekAndFind

Our organic roadside stand and farm has been doing well for 19 years.

Started with about 4 acres, no green houses, now to 8 acres with 6 greenhouses. Very popular place.

Took several years to switch over. Building up micro organisms in the soil and refining weed control. Very strong now.

Organic customers don’t mind paying more and are very loyal.

Just can’t figure some people out ... I hate Kale but grow several varieties at 6000-8000 sf each year.


11 posted on 01/31/2022 8:13:51 AM PST by jcon40 (Machinery is only as good as its design and quality of parts. A citizen is only as good as...)
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To: SeekAndFind

A really good Amish Farmer can produce 60% as much as an industrial farm.

So, we can be organic if 40% of the people quit eating.


12 posted on 01/31/2022 8:16:03 AM PST by MattMusson (Sometimes the wind blows too much)
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To: SeekAndFind

3rd World Ag is dependent upon Fossil Fuel Fertilizer. With the fertilizer they can feed themselves. Without it, they go hungry.

With Biden, the Greens have shutdown fertilizer plants around the globe. And, we are about to see the:

Largest Starvation Event in Human History.


13 posted on 01/31/2022 8:18:15 AM PST by MattMusson (Sometimes the wind blows too much)
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To: PGR88

“It’s basically antibiotics, the haber-bosch process, and chemical pesticides that allowed the world to go from about 1 billion people in the 1800s, to 8 billion now.”

You’re telling me that such real science stuff can have negative consequences when removed from the equation??? No…/s


14 posted on 01/31/2022 8:22:00 AM PST by T-Bird45 (It feels like the seventies, and it shouldn't. )
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To: The Great RJ

I watch a tv program early in the day called “Highway Thru Hell”, in Canada & Alaska.

It is a show about the Heavy rescue wreckers that clear the highways when a large truck goes off or cannot climb a hill in bad winter weather. Wreckers that can pull as much as 66,000 pounds. Average car weighs about 3500# these days.

Today, a 35 ton wrecker towed 3 VERY OVERSIZED trucks & loads of mining equipment up a slick highway in Canada.

One at a time, and backed down the highway to retrieve the 2nd & 3rd ones. All done at NIGHT-—and had to chain up to pull the 240,000# loads. Pulled them to the top of the mountain at about 5 MPH, but DID pull them.

Tell me how that will happen with ELECTRIC WRECKERS.

Another segment had a job of pulling a log conveyor machine out of a location that had shut down logging some years earlier. Solid steel, and stuck in river mud & sand.

2 Heavy Rescue wreckers PLUS large Caterpillar tractor with long boom. Finally had 11 lines/cables/chains attached to conveyor and trucks were sinking their stabilizer pads into the ground....BUT it got done-—after 10 hours of work by 3 experienced persons.

NOTHING these guys do will EVER get done by anything ELECTRIC and battery powered.


15 posted on 01/31/2022 8:44:36 AM PST by ridesthemiles
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To: SeekAndFind

“…chemical fertilizer ban …”

On the bright side, human feces now fetch 50 cents a kilo…..


16 posted on 01/31/2022 10:20:05 AM PST by VanShuyten ("...that all the donkeys were dead. I know nothing as to the fate of the less valuable animals)
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To: Soul of the South

In CA they are putting banks of solar panels over parking lots, especially public bldgs such as schools. A bit of an eyesore but obviously much better than what they’re doing in your area.


17 posted on 01/31/2022 11:09:49 AM PST by who_would_fardels_bear (This is not a tagline.)
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To: PGR88

But think of all the lean Soylent Green that will be available for the table.


18 posted on 01/31/2022 11:15:56 AM PST by oldasrocks
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To: wbarmy

Honey buckets for all just like living in china


19 posted on 01/31/2022 11:17:45 AM PST by oldasrocks
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To: The Great RJ

Diesels can be run on liquified or.compressed methane made from the very crop wastes they harvest, and more importantly from the manure of chickens, pigs and feedlot cattle. This methane is 100% renewable as it is made with fermentation of a stream of organic wastes.

Its also drastically cleaner with near zero particulates which diesels are the number one source of PM 2.5 pollution in the world.

Diesels can also be run very cleanly on alcohol fuels again with zero particulates those alcohols are made yup by fermentation of crop wastes in second GEN cellulose based alcohols. Butanol has nearly the same density in MJ/Liter as petrol so much so you can run a unmodified modern O2 lambda controlled with fuel injected by ECU petrol engine on it directly. Its air fuel ratio is so close to regular petrol the fuel maps work directly from the stock ECU maps.

This company is commercializing alcohol fueled diesels.

https://www.clearflameengines.com/

The amounts of fuels used by farm diesels is tiny fraction under 2% of the total fuel use in the USA the largest consumer is retail petrol for all the useless eaters driving about everywhere. There is more than enough agricultural waste to make biofuels with to supply the combines and tractors. Over one billion tons of agriculture wastes are.produced in a given year thats more than enough if fermented to.methane to fuel the entire agricultural sector in fact it could fuel most of the diesels in the rest of the transportation sectors as well. Its not enough to fuel all the petrol usage which most people drive alone in inefficient vehicles with a single person in it. That will have to stop and the UK is working hard at it. The keys are congestion charges to enter the urban areas, pay by the KM road charges, raising petrol and diesels registration tariffs much higher than EVs and putting a ever increasing carbon tax on fossil carbon sources. This shifts the economics to favor biofuels and electrified vehicles. Since every legitimate government on the planet has agreed to transition to a low carbon economy it’s now a matter of implementation the governments have spoken no one really cares any more what a few millions think vs the other 7+ billion people. Simply put even if half the redneck yanks disagree thats only 160 million at best they are outnumbered 40 to one by those demanding the shift to a low carbon economy.


20 posted on 01/31/2022 2:48:24 PM PST by JD_UTDallas ("Veni Vidi Vici" )
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