[HN Gopher] Sri Lanka's overnight flip to organic farming has le...
___________________________________________________________________
Sri Lanka's overnight flip to organic farming has led to an
economic disaster
Author : mhb
Score : 250 points
Date : 2021-09-07 12:22 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (theprint.in)
(TXT) w3m dump (theprint.in)
| temporalparts wrote:
| One thing that's worth talking about is the approach that the
| government took. The sudden ban on a vital component of their
| agriculture (non-organic chemical fertilizer) had some bad non-
| obvious impacts.
|
| A better strategy towards the shift to organic (regardless of how
| you feel about the move itself) would have been to impose an ever
| increasing tax to understand the long-term impacts of moving away
| from something their economy heavily relied on.
| guerby wrote:
| Looks like a hit piece to me.
|
| "The result: (...) kerosene oil and cooking gas prices are
| surging"
|
| Hmm what the relation from cooking gas prices to organic farming?
|
| "According to the Annual Review of Resource Economics, organic
| agriculture generates more air pollutants and environmental
| emissions in the crop production process for a unit of food than
| chemical farming."
|
| Reading the paper :
| https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-resource-1...
|
| "The evidence suggests that organic agriculture uses less energy
| per unit of land, and to a lesser extent, also per unit of output
| than conventional agriculture "
|
| No mention of other air pollution I could find.
|
| Nice to point to a paper that says the exact opposite of what the
| press article says.
|
| I didn't check the rest, I'm assuming pesticide and chemical
| fertilizer producer saw a nice opportunity (fall of income due to
| COVID impact on tourism) to avoid organic contagion to other
| countries through cheap to corrupt journalists.
| brandmeyer wrote:
| > Hmm what the relation from cooking gas prices to organic
| farming?
|
| Organic practices -> Lost productivity per acre + increased
| costs per acre -> Loss of export profits -> Currency
| devaluation relative to international currencies (USD, EUR) ->
| Increasing prices of imports
|
| All of that process is plainly stated in the article.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Probably because a bad harvest can have disastrous results that
| are felt across the economy? Shortages of foreign currency can
| usually mean shortages of goods inside a country, as
| governments either try to minimize forex outflows (and thus
| imports) or is just forced to after running out.
|
| And honestly that's a very very weird argument. You are saying
| that a real life result has to be discounted because of a...
| Research paper? Especially one that obviously doesn't take into
| account the particularities of Sri Lanka? Actually scratch
| that, the study you linked doesn't say what you are saying _at
| all_. It 's much more nuanced and frankly it makes the "it's
| big agro corrupt journalists" narrative even more ridiculous.
|
| > _These results should not be extrapolated, as unbiased
| evidence about organic yield effects under real-world
| conditions is limited (Kravchenko et al. 2017, Leifeld 2016)_.
| In any case, given the higher knowledge requirements for
| successful organic farming, it is likely that the average yield
| gaps would rise if an increasing number of farmers would adopt
| organic practices.
|
| > _However, where modern inputs are available and more commonly
| used, organic farmers typically have lower yields than
| conventional farmers_. Yield gaps tend to increase during the
| process of economic development (Valkila 2009).The yield gaps
| imply that more land would be required to produce the same
| quantity of output with organic methods
|
| > _The conclusion that organic farming is not the global
| blueprint for sustainable agriculture does not mean that
| organic methods cannot be useful in specific situations_. Under
| certain conditions, organic farming can be clearly positive for
| the environment, even when the effects are measured per unit of
| output.
|
| So that's exactly what it is saying : organic farming can be
| good, probably can't replace conventional methods, and if you
| want the yields to even start comparing somewhat favorably with
| conventional agriculture you need to build a lot of
| institutional knowledge, provide resources to farmers and
| _time_. It 's better than traditional, very small scale
| agriculture, but if the inputs for "chemical" farming are there
| you should probably use them. That's a lot of caveats and they
| mostly don't apply to this situation.
| jcranberry wrote:
| I find it hard to believe that you read the entire section on
| environmental impact, let alone the paper, if that single
| sentence in that section is all you could find. The quote from
| the press article does not disagree with what the paper says.
|
| "The evidence suggests that organic agriculture uses less
| energy per unit of land, and to a lesser extent, also per unit
| of output than conventional agriculture (Table 3). This
| difference is mainly attributable to the nonuse of synthetic
| fertilizers and pesticides in organic systems. Fuel use for
| agricultural operations is similar across systems. However, for
| certain crops (especially vegetables) more fuel is sometimes
| required in organic production, when repeated mechanical or
| thermal weed control becomes necessary (Lynch et al. 2011,
| Scialabba & Muller-Lindenlauf 2010, Smith et al. 2015). This
| may also lead to higher overall energy use in organic systems
| in certain situations (Lee et al. 2015).
|
| "Concerning GHG emissions, most studies conclude that organic
| farming has lower impacts when expressed per unit of land but
| not when expressed per unit of output (Table 3). Generally,
| organic systems are characterized by lower nitrogen inputs, and
| thus lower N2O emission potential. However, balancing nutrient
| supply and plant demand is typically more challenging in
| organic systems; oversupply of nitrogen from organic fertilizer
| may also lead to significant N2O emissions, while undersupply
| leads to lower yields (Clark & Tilman 2017, Lynch et al. 2011,
| Skinner et al. 2014). In crop production, soil carbon stocks
| and sequestration rates were found to be significantly higher
| in organic than in conventional systems (Gattinger et al. 2012,
| Lori et al. 2017). In livestock production, less intensive
| organic husbandry systems lead to larger quantities of manure
| per unit of meat, and thus higher methane and N2O emissions
| (Treu et al. 2017). Overall, the evidence does not support the
| widely held notion that organic agriculture is more climate
| friendly than conventional agriculture (WBA 2016)."
|
| Unfortunately that last citation is some 500 page document in
| German which I'm unable to read.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| What is the rationale for calculating relative impacts per
| acre instead of per unit output? This appears like a hustle
| to make organic agriculture look better than it is.
|
| I am prepared to be wrong about that, of course. It isn't
| completely beyond the realm of possibility that there are
| legitimate "dilution is the solution to pollution" effects at
| play. I just... have doubts.
| guerby wrote:
| Did you really read table 3?
|
| Per output organic vs conventional: Energy
| use 15-21% lower a,b Nitrous oxide emissions 8% higher
| a GHG emissions 0-10% lower a,b,c GHG emissions
| of organic diet equal to conventional diet d
|
| One 2012 paper (I did not track it) says nitrous oxide higher
| 8% but GHG less up to 10% or identical, so less air pollution
| overall.
|
| For reference Nitrous oxide is around 7% of all GHG in the
| USA, so the +8% by 70% by 7% doesn't amount to much vs 0-10%
| when you add up, source:
| https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-
| emis...
| mrosett wrote:
| The other comments point out that you skipped or ignored the
| relevant sections of the paper, but you also missed this in the
| abstract:
|
| > Organic farming is less polluting than conventional farming
| when measured per unit of land but not when measured per unit
| of output. Organic farming, which currently accounts for only
| 1% of global agricultural land, is lower yielding on average.
| Due to higher knowledge requirements, observed yield gaps might
| further increase if a larger number of farmers would switch to
| organic practices.
|
| In other words, forcing a ton of farmers to switch to organic
| farming over night would almost certainly lead to them being
| much less efficient than average organic farmers.
| erfgh wrote:
| Government intervention to the market, never fails to destroy.
| i_haz_rabies wrote:
| Yes, this is like that time that the government banned asbestos
| and destroyed the residential development market.
| [deleted]
| snambi wrote:
| Good decision. but there will be a short term impact. theprint.in
| artciles are generally biased and paid for by the big industry,
| so don't take it as fact.
| kortilla wrote:
| No shit. The biggest problem with organic is that it's
| unsustainable for our population. It's only useful for rich
| people to brag about amongst themselves.
|
| It's not even sustainable for the US to switch to organic for its
| own citizens, even setting aside the food it exports.
|
| Wtf was the Sri Lankan govt thinking..
| kareemm wrote:
| > The biggest problem with organic is that it's unsustainable
| for our population.
|
| Do you have a source on this? I've read things that are mostly
| good when undertaken in a thoughtful way at a reasonable pace.
| pessimizer wrote:
| If it reduced yield by 20%, that doesn't mean it's
| unsustainable, it means it's somewhat more expensive. The
| difference between "rich people" and poor people isn't 20%.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > Wtf was the Sri Lankan govt thinking..
|
| It is thinking whatever any other co with Marxist streak does.
|
| They want to look cool, and "revolutionary". A lot of stage
| moves.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > The biggest problem with organic is that it's unsustainable
| for our population.
|
| It's likely this is also true for the "dump millions of tons of
| pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, and fertilizers on the
| Great Plains" approach in the long run.
| 1cvmask wrote:
| The gist of the article is at the bottom regarding the
| externalities to a push to complete organic farming overnight:
|
| Threat to food security? According to experts, three
| scientifically rigorous meta-analyses of organic-conventional
| crop yield comparisons indicate that across all crops, the mean
| yield reduction in organic agriculture in Sri Lanka is around
| 19-25 per cent. This shows that an overnight shift to organic
| cultivation presents a clear and imminent threat to the country's
| food security.
|
| Eminent researchers have also noted that organic farming
| increases farmland due to its low yields. This results in
| deforestation, leading to large scale extinction of species and a
| rise in greenhouse emissions.
|
| According to the Annual Review of Resource Economics, organic
| agriculture generates more air pollutants and environmental
| emissions in the crop production process for a unit of food than
| chemical farming.
|
| Moreover, organic farming has exponentially higher monetary input
| costs due to a lack of usage of pest and pathogen-resistant
| chemicals, which increases manual labour, according to experts.
| The additional processing and marketing costs of organic produce
| is also significantly higher, analysts said.
| RobertRoberts wrote:
| I would argue that I need to eat less high-quality food, which
| has greatly affected my weight, health and energy levels. I
| can't say organic is always more high-quality (in regards to
| nutrient my body needs), but I can say I have experienced a
| difference in quality of life after adopting many organic
| foods.
|
| And so have many, many other people that are now so sick that
| their bodies simply won't tolerate (allergic reactions) non-
| organic food.
|
| I think it's just fine to have 20% less output if you get more
| out of the food.
| 1cvmask wrote:
| I also generally opt for organic (at least marketed as such).
| I don't know much on how much better it really is though
| apart from my feelings. But feelings and perceptions could
| lead to beneficial placebo effects.
|
| It is another thing to mandate it for all agriculture
| overnight in a poor developing country.
| NavinF wrote:
| > their bodies simply won't tolerate (allergic reactions)
| non-organic food
|
| There is no evidence of this ever happening to anyone
| anywhere. The fact that you think this is even possible means
| you drank the Kool-Aid.
| bserge wrote:
| 9 billion people. Some of them are bound to be allergic to
| some fertilizer or other.
| ovi256 wrote:
| That shouldn't be an issue because nobody should eat
| fertilizer! It's plant food, not people food.
| NavinF wrote:
| Most sources say 8 billion. Anyway, he said that some
| people are so sick that they can't eat non-organic food.
| Not food with a specific pesticide. His claim is very
| different from yours, and IMO his is indefensible.
| yarcob wrote:
| But to the consumer it's not clear what is causing the
| issue. They might just see that they can eat only organic
| vegetables.
|
| For example, my mom has told me she can't eat bell
| peppers from Spain because she get diarrhea from them.
|
| Now, I don't think that bell peppers grow different in
| Spain than they do in Portugal or in Italy, it's probably
| some pesticide or some fertilizer or something. It's
| probably not all spanish peppers, but we just don't know
| enough about the produce at the supermarket. All they
| tell us is the country of origin, so the only thing she
| can do is avoid spanish peppers.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> According to experts, three scientifically rigorous meta-
| analyses of organic-conventional crop yield comparisons
| indicate that across all crops, the mean yield reduction in
| organic agriculture in Sri Lanka is around 19-25 per cent.
|
| For a country that is a "net food importer" it seems obvious
| that would cause some kind of shock. The other stuff:
|
| >> Eminent researchers have also noted that organic farming
| increases farmland due to its low yields. This results in
| deforestation, leading to large scale extinction of species and
| a rise in greenhouse emissions.
|
| Longer term. Not relevant to this situation. There is also
| research showing the opposite, but again that's not the
| immediate isse.
|
| >> organic agriculture generates more air pollutants and
| environmental emissions _in the crop production process_ for a
| unit of food than chemical farming.
|
| Not relevant. Notice the exclusion of pollutants in the
| chemical (fertilizer) production process. But again, not
| relevant to the current situation.
|
| >> organic farming has exponentially higher monetary input
| costs due to a lack of usage of pest and pathogen-resistant
| chemicals, which increases manual labour, according to experts
|
| "exponentially" is an exaggeration. The formerly mentioned
| increase in area means increase in labor.
|
| >> The additional processing and marketing costs of organic
| produce is also significantly higher, analysts said.
|
| You don't really need to do ANY marketing when the government
| mandated that everyone do it.
|
| There's a lot here that's basically anti-organic, but the real
| problem is that it's simply more expensive, requiring a more
| land and labor and they didn't account for any of that in the
| rapid transition.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| "Exponentially" is worse than an exaggeration, it just makes
| no sense. The word describes curves (where the input, usually
| the horizontal axis, is an input or time), not pairs of
| points such as (organic, price) and (conventional, price).
| iovrthoughtthis wrote:
| Why would "kerosene oil and cooking gas" prices rise are a result
| of organic only agriculture?
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| A currency crash raises local prices...
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Does organic agriculture use more of them? Organic agriculture
| uses more of a lot of things.
| elisharobinson wrote:
| more precisely, fixed cost of fuel and transport has not
| changed but yield is lower. Hence price's rise .
| iovrthoughtthis wrote:
| You're probably right there. That could be what is alluded to
| when they mention that the organic technologies "generates
| more air pollutants and environmental emissions". Basically
| they burn more stuff.
| jimlikeslimes wrote:
| I think widespread panic hording of essentials triggered by the
| other shortages/price increases.
| Ayesh wrote:
| You can't hord if you don't have money. The local Rupee was
| depreciated a lot, and the food prices have gone up 20-30% to
| a point that it is simply too expensive to hord things.
|
| There are some loosely imposed rules that one cannot buy more
| than 5kg of rice per turn, etc. But I don't see people
| actively hording things. The long lines are likely because a
| shop is only allowed to bring in 2-3 customers at once.
| iovrthoughtthis wrote:
| True, the panic hoarding almost certainly wasn't restricted
| to foods only. See toilet paper hoarding early in the
| pandemic.
| blueblisters wrote:
| Sri Lankans can probably answer this but Sri Lanka is in a
| vicious cycle - Covid-19 devastated tourism, which reduced the
| foreign currency reserves, which weakened the Sri Lankan Rupee,
| which made imports costly for an island that depends on imports
| for many basic necessities. This combined with harebrained
| policies of the President have put Sri Lanka, one of the
| richest countries (by per capita GDP) in the Indian
| subcontinent onto a path of economic devastation.
| iovrthoughtthis wrote:
| I would assume they import fuel so this makes sense too.
| Ayesh wrote:
| The vicious cycle is true (source: Sri Lankan, but not
| actively living there).
|
| The current president isn't the only one to blame, though.
| For the past 15 or so years, the government relied more and
| more on China to basically keep its wheels moving at the
| comfort of endless projects funded by China. Sri Lanka used
| to manufacture a lot of things such as tyre, sugar, paper,
| etc. The over reliance on imported goods didn't play out
| well, and things such as tyre, sugar, and paper are now at a
| shortage because the government simply didn't bother to
| improve the local manufacturing of said goods.
| tomrod wrote:
| Without intending to start a debate: we see something
| similar occurring in Venezuela due to a choice to focus on
| oil production a few years (decade?) back instead balancing
| food and oil production.
|
| There may well be something to institutional economics and
| the notion of a holon.
| mikeiz404 wrote:
| Some highlights from the article:
|
| _According to an estimate, tea is Sri Lanka's single biggest
| export, bringing in over $1.25 billion /year, which is nearly 10
| per cent of the country's export income._
|
| ...
|
| _An island-wide survey of farmers found out that 90 per cent use
| chemicals for farming and 85 per cent expected sizable reductions
| in their harvest if disallowed to use fertilisers. Moreover, the
| survey said that only 20 per cent farmers had the knowledge to
| transition to completely organic production._
|
| ...
|
| _The survey also revealed that many key crops in Sri Lanka
| depend on heavy use of chemical input for cultivation, with the
| highest dependency in paddy at 94 per cent, followed by tea and
| rubber at 89 per cent each._
|
| ...
|
| _According to experts, three scientifically rigorous meta-
| analyses of organic-conventional crop yield comparisons indicate
| that across all crops, the mean yield reduction in organic
| agriculture in Sri Lanka is around 19-25 per cent._
|
| ...
|
| The article also states 2-3 million tons is estimated to be
| produced locally per year, and paddy cultivation requires 4
| million tons per year and tea cultivation requires 3 million tons
| per year. So they are short there.
| aaroninsf wrote:
| Problems with the article aside, I will make a de rigeur
| observation:
|
| Unsustainable agriculture, decorously defended as "economic" with
| its innumerable deferred and eternalized costs neatly ignored in
| polite company, is a civilizational dead end.
| seattle-hippie wrote:
| Organic farming could also depleted soil nutrients the same way
| as modern agriculture. Regenerative farming could be a
| sustainable alternative to this problem. I think politics failed
| here to really understand how to transition to a sustainable
| model. Check producer Gave Brown https://youtu.be/QfTZ0rnowcc
| tsjq wrote:
| China will come to the "rescue" and in exchange for take over of
| some more cities / ports of SriLanka forever.
| addicted wrote:
| This tells us less about the viability of organic farming and
| more about the idea that one can change an entire nation's
| agriculture system overnight by fiat.
|
| Zimbabwe tried that and failed (no organic farming needed there).
| And now Sri Lanka is trying it and failing.
|
| A more sensible approach would be to phase it in with the right
| incentives for organic farming and adding the cost of
| externalizes to the price of non organic farm produce in a phased
| in manner.
| TMWNN wrote:
| >Zimbabwe tried that and failed (no organic farming needed
| there).
|
| Recent history of Zimbabwe (<http://imgur.com/a/VdQdD>)
| abc_lisper wrote:
| Green revolution is no joke. To do this countrywide without doing
| pilot projects and studying the results is kinda lame and stupid
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| A "revolution" which imposed from above is generally trash, for
| many of the same reasons that big-bang replacement projects
| fail. Incremental change is the responsible way forward; it
| will show you the costs of your decision, and give you time to
| understand the best practices which will mitigate these costs
| as you perform a gradual roll-out.
|
| Even the successful American Revolution was an incremental
| change: an effort to preserve a tradition which feted the
| traditional rights and liberties of Englishmen going back to
| the Magna Carta. The shift in philosophical underpinnings may
| have been radical, but the political culture barely changed at
| all.
| vimy wrote:
| The EU wants to push the same dangerous idea with the green deal.
| Switch 25 % of farms to organic in ten years.
|
| Edit: People seem to misunderstand. I don't mean overnight, I
| mean pushing the same idea = organic farming. It's doesn't work
| at scale. Doesn't matter if you have ten years or one day.
| tpm wrote:
| That's not the same at all.
| vimy wrote:
| It will push food prices higher and make the EU more
| dependent on other regions for food security. It's
| shortsighted and dangerous.
| nicoffeine wrote:
| The EU is already dependent on other regions because
| without imported synthetic fertilizers and other chemicals,
| they won't be able to produce the same yields anyway. Most
| countries there already have 10% or more farmland dedicated
| to organic practices.[1] They have more tooling and
| expertise available outside the chemical monocropping
| approach, which is what doomed the change in Sri Lanka.
|
| [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/657572/organic-
| farmland-...
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| A gradual increase seems to be the right way. It lets producers
| adapt slowly.
| [deleted]
| shinryuu wrote:
| Doing something over 10 years and overnight are two very
| different things.
| cestith wrote:
| Phasing changes in over time with proper education, training,
| and building out of supporting industry is not nearly the same
| as announcing a flag day when your farmers don't have warning,
| training, or access to the replacement goods.
| frafra wrote:
| US Organic and EU organic are two different things. In EU
| organic "bio", copper pesticides are allowed, and even
| compounds synthesized by humans in some borderline cases.
| Differences for wines are even more profound.
| m_eiman wrote:
| As a reference, currently 20% of Sweden's area used for crops
| is organic.
|
| Edit: and 17% of milk production.
| temphnaccount wrote:
| Here is the summary in video from the same media house which
| discusses some other points in detail (it's as opinionated as the
| original article about organic farming though) -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVHUwvC7Og0
| iovrthoughtthis wrote:
| I wonder what proportion of this is caused by the speed of change
| vs the changes them selves.
|
| I assume everyone would expect lower yields from more primitive
| growing and processing technologies.
| phkahler wrote:
| I would assume a shock to the system as happened until the
| farmers adapt to something different.
|
| To call it more primitive doesn't seem honest. Modern farming
| practices destroy the soil quality while using shortcuts to get
| higher yield in spite of that. From what I've read I think the
| jury is still out on which is better. Obviously organic farming
| is bad for the fertilizer and pesticide business.
| iovrthoughtthis wrote:
| I use "more primitive" based on the assumption that less
| focused development has gone into the technology for organic
| farming than chemical farming but if the word provides a
| negative connotation then, well, that's not what I mean.
|
| One of the things I wanted to chime in with, somewhere in the
| discussion, was that this is the sort of policy which pushes
| people to develop technologies and that perhaps if deployed
| more slowly it might have driven innovation in organic
| farming.
|
| Something like a pilot scheme + opt in + subsidies.
| bluGill wrote:
| Unlike primitive farming, modern farming is aware of the
| soil. Primitive farming is what works to a minimal extent,
| but in general isn't very good for soil health. Modern
| farming looks to science to figure out what really make soil
| healthy.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| > At the root of this economic catastrophe is a bizarre overnight
| flip by Rajapaksa's government on 29 April to ban the import of
| chemical fertilisers and any other agrochemicals to make the
| Indian Ocean nation the first in the world to practice organic-
| only agriculture.
|
| Time and again we see this top-down police push that don't
| consult key stake holders (farmers, merchants, consumers etc.,)
| or fail to consider their feedback ending in a disaster.
|
| To top it off they rolled it out 100% (No A/B experiment, so to
| speak). These big changes have higher order effects that manifest
| post launch and can't easily be predicted. They denied themselves
| a chance to adopt to those higher order effects by launching it
| overnight. The result is not too surprising.
| eadmund wrote:
| This is the fundamental problem with technocracy: the
| technocrats cannot know everything about the current state, and
| they cannot predict everything about the future state. It is
| very easy after the fact to critique their decisions ('hey, why
| didn't you just increase taxes on chemical fertilisers by 10%
| annually over the course of a decade?'), but it is in the
| general case impossible for central planners to make informed
| decisions. The problem space is just too large.
|
| The only workable answer is for lots of distributed planners to
| make lots of real-time decisions based on pertinent
| information. Most of them will make bad decisions, but a few
| will make correct ones, and hence win.
| epistasis wrote:
| I don't think this could be called technocratic, since the
| experts about the subject matter were not making the calls.
| natmaka wrote:
| s/technocracy/jacobinism/ , maybe(?)
|
| Centralization and a bureaucracy applying a decision upon a
| large territory is a good recipe for disaster if the
| decision is a bad one.
|
| Any "overnight flip to" anything is often a bad decision.
|
| Moreover the real cause is an economic crisis centered on a
| foreign exchange deficit:
| http://www.srilankaguardian.org/2021/07/sri-lanka-
| manufactur...
| yarcob wrote:
| The unsurprising result is that naysayers call the change a
| failure before the first harvest after the change.
|
| They "predict" that they will lose 50% of the harvest. Let's
| not call it a failure just yet and see how this turns out after
| a few years.
|
| Sure, sudden change is disruptive, but humans are adaptable and
| can accomplish amazing things in a crisis. If they don't revert
| it and stay organic only, maybe they'll have an amazing
| reputation and a huge competitive edge in a decade.
| bserge wrote:
| As long as you're not one of those who need to adapt, I
| guess.
|
| They won't have an edge. The green revolution is what allowed
| population to boom.
|
| Now some people are like "yeah, let's go back to before"?
|
| Sounds a lot like the people who shun vaccines and
| medication.
| Veen wrote:
| > Sure, sudden change is disruptive, but humans are adaptable
|
| Yes, the population can adapt downwards as people starve or
| migrate somewhere else. After a decade or so, the people who
| are left will be in an excellent position to sell organic tea
| to middle-class Americans.
|
| Similar arguments were made in defence of collectivization in
| the 1920s. The complacency is astounding.
| pueblito wrote:
| I am a commercial organic farmer. I have trouble sourcing
| something every year and I live in the United States and have
| resources available to me to afford exotic things like potash
| from Alaska or pathogens to kill grasshoppers. If it's a wet
| spring and I need more pest mitigation I can have a hundred
| guinea hens mailed express for $200.
|
| I'm poorly traveled and ignorant of Sri Lanka but I believe it's
| a very poor country where $200 is a lot to ask for let alone
| luxuries like pest pathogens, ag netting, soil testing etc etc...
| And if you don't have all that, then going organic is going to
| absolutely destroy yields and you cannot have a modern society if
| everyone is farming
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| I frequently buy organic produce and it is consistently more
| expensive. I am willing and able to pay for it but even in rich
| Western countries organic farming is a tiny niche.
| quanto wrote:
| How could one order a hundred guinea hens for $200 shipped? Is
| this a birds-as-a-service model where you rent birds for
| farming? A genuine question.
| pueblito wrote:
| Here's an example. The guinea hens eat the bugs and
| aggressively chase rattlesnakes out, and then coyotes and
| hawks eat the hens. Like most things it's a mixed blessing
| because the snakes keep the rodent and rabbits population in
| check.
|
| https://www.metzerfarms.com/GuineaFowl.cfm
| iovrthoughtthis wrote:
| I wonder if they could become a net importer of organic waste?
| a-nikolaev wrote:
| > "The ban has drawn the tea industry into complete disarray...
| If we go completely organic, we will lose 50 per cent of the
| crop, (but) we are not going to get 50 per cent higher prices,"
| he reportedly said.
|
| To break even, you need to double prices (i.e. 100% higher), not
| 50% higher. Very strange expert.
| Ayesh wrote:
| The government is trying very hard to preserve its USD reserves.
| Importing vehicles is downright banned for 16 months now, and
| there are many rules imposed to control the USD outflow and
| improve the inflow.
|
| I don't think this is anything new amidst a global pandemic, in a
| country that depended on tourism.
|
| Saying that chemical fertilizer ban caused a food shortage isn't
| any fair or accurate, because the sugar crisis (a can of worms by
| itself) happened before the fertilizer ban, and the government
| imposing lockdowns caused the food supply issues. That said,
| there are many companies increasing their organic fertilizer
| production, and even smaller scale individual investors who are
| planning to produce organic fertilizers too.
|
| Many of us see this as a net positive, but there must be a ramp,
| as opposed to an overnight switch.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| "Many of us see this as a net positive, but there must be a
| ramp, as opposed to an overnight switch."
|
| Yes, absolutely. The move has to be done gradually to allow
| farming to adapt. An overnight cutoff would surely cause yields
| to drop.
|
| What isn't clear to me is how much warning was given for the
| ban. Was it announced ahead of time?
| Ayesh wrote:
| The current president was elected in 2019, and I believe it
| was one of his "visions" to change chemical fertilizers to
| organic.
|
| In the northern parts of the country, where the majority of
| rice farms are, a considerable percentage of people have
| kidney diseases that attribute to the use of chemical
| fertilizer.
|
| There is a surplus of rice production in the country, so I
| don't think the reduced crop will make a big difference.
|
| However, the state of tea farming is not the same. Price of
| Sri Lankan tea (Ceylon tea as it's commonly called) at
| auctions was slowly going down for the past few years, and
| tea estates expect the government to make an exception for
| them.
|
| Since this ban was announced, the finance minister was
| changed to the brother of the current president (another can
| of worms), who might make necessary changes, exceptions, or
| probably just delay it to make sure the tea industry isn't
| disrupted.
| montalbano wrote:
| Are you sure about the first paragraph? This article
| suggest otherwise:
|
| https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210901-sri-lanka-
| org...
|
| _Rajapaksa came to power in 2019 promising subsidised
| foreign fertiliser but did a U-turn arguing that agro
| chemicals were poisoning people._
| draw_down wrote:
| Come on
| yread wrote:
| Sri Lanka is actually not that dependent on tourism in 2019 it
| was 12% of GDP compared to 18% for Thailand
| JCharante wrote:
| and Thailand is hugely dependent on tourism, Bangkok is the
| most visited city in the world.
| enkid wrote:
| I don't think saying someone is more dependent on tourism
| makes it the case that Sri Lanka isn't dependent on tourism.
| An overnight drop of 12% is huge.
| [deleted]
| dathinab wrote:
| What matters is not organic farming, bio farming, no-chemistry
| farming or anything like that.
|
| What matters is substainable farming.
|
| And what is often labeled as BIO/organic is often _not_ the
| _most_ substainable farming method. It 's to much focused on
| categorizing thinks by their origin instead of categorizing them
| by their effect specific to their usage.
|
| (And over night switches to anything tend to not be a good idea.)
| necovek wrote:
| The fun with percentages: people get it wrong even when it hugely
| affects their bottom line.
|
| > "The ban has drawn the tea industry into complete disarray...
| If we go completely organic, we will lose 50 per cent of the
| crop, (but) we are not going to get 50 per cent higher prices"
|
| Thinking simplistically like that (the entirety of the cost is
| not in production, ofc), you need 100 per cent higher prices
| (double) to cover for losing 50 per cent (half) of the crop --
| this "tea conglomerate expert" has not thought this through :)
|
| Percentages are so ingrained in our culture, but with them being
| a relative measure, they are so easy to confuse.
|
| Why not speak in simpler terms to help yourselves? "Losing half
| the crop, we'll need to double the prices (to break even)."
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| "The national debt has soared from close to $48 billion in 2016
| to $86 billion in 2021."
|
| The dollar reserves went from $8bn to $3bn.
|
| The country regulated imports including fertilizers.
| gibspaulding wrote:
| This is really sad to see. This seems like a potentially good
| idea (long term) that was horribly executed. Reminds me of the
| Munich Linux fiasco [1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| I don't think Munich is a good example. From what I know things
| were working reasonably well but Microsoft muscled their way
| back in with a lot of money and lobbying. If anything Munich is
| a warning that businesses will do whatever they can to obstruct
| progress if it doesn't make money for them.
|
| If there was a broad movement towards organic farming I would
| expect a similar thing: corporations will put out a lot of
| propaganda and buy off politicians to stop this.
| streamofdigits wrote:
| This feels like a perfect summary of the struggle (political,
| economic, social) that lies ahead for the entire planet.
|
| The post most likely has a political agenda so outsiders
| commenting walk into a landmine but anyways, here my two cents
| worth of observations, more as generally commentary
|
| Doing nothing is not an option: Controlling the water
| consumption, chemical effluent, deforestation, biodiversity
| impact etc of ever growing agricultural activity is a no-brainer.
| Yet:
|
| * any misstep in the so-called "transition" or adaptation will be
| ruthlessly exploited by those who basically do not care what
| comes down a few generations. Even well-meaning politicians will
| be reluctant to be proactive or first movers if they face
| crucifixion.
|
| * more specifically: the food scarcity scare will be used
| cunningly to protect existing agribusiness interests from lost
| profits. NB: Tea is a export oriented cash crop. This does not
| mean its not important (if those exports finance food imports, or
| even just because a whole bunch of people make their living
| though this) but conflating unrelated interests is not how an
| honest society solves problems
|
| I just hope that the people of this beautiful and remote island
| (Arthur C. Clarke lived there BTW I wonder what he would have
| thought) find a way to transition and thrive in a sustainable
| future...
| refurb wrote:
| So your take is:
|
| - we have to make this transition
|
| - if there is any pushback or stumbles during the transition
| it's not because the transition is wrong, but because of
| nefarious forces?
| streamofdigits wrote:
| my take is pretty clear and it is not what you describe.
|
| but what is your take? that somebody sitting pretty at the
| top of the food chain will simply roll over and absorb the
| losses because it turns out a whole range of practices is
| unsustainable?
|
| I've got a few stranded assets to sell to you
| nextaccountic wrote:
| I think it's more like, there will be people sabotaging the
| transition at every step, using any misstep as an argument to
| not do make transition at all.
| lvs wrote:
| That seems to be what's happened so far.
| mellavora wrote:
| All posts I'm seeing here are highly critical of organic farming.
|
| And most are based on a very short-term picture, which ignores
| the long-term costs of chemical-based farming: the incredible
| soil depletion and insect population depletion.
|
| Chem-based clearly gives higher yields for a period of 50-80
| years, but what happens after that?
|
| Organic/permaculture is sustainable and possible even for our
| large populations. It presents challenges to some other
| assumptions of our highly industrialized food supply chain, but
| that doesn't mean it can't feed the globe.
|
| It just makes it harder for one or two companies to monopolize
| everything.
| luc4sdreyer wrote:
| Organic crops are much worse for the environment in the long
| term.
|
| The biggest environment problem right now is habitat loss. In
| 100 years it might be climate change (of course we should
| definitely try to prevent climate change), but for the
| foreseeable future it's habitat loss. The current extinction
| event is mostly driven by habitat loss. Most habitat loss is
| due to the conversion from natural land to farmland[1]. We're
| losing between 24 and 150 species _per day_.[2]
|
| Organic crops are much less land efficient[3][4][5], so they
| drive habitat loss. It also releases more greenhouse gasses,
| but given the scale of environmental destruction that a
| worldwide increase in organic farming could cause, there isn't
| even a point in talking about it.
|
| Organic farming is a marketing ploy where food suppliers
| realised they can sell fake ethical superiority to consumers.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_destruction
|
| [2]
| https://e360.yale.edu/features/global_extinction_rates_why_d...
|
| [3]
| https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/10/22/132497/sorryorga...
|
| [4] https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2019/11/organic-
| farmin...
|
| [5] https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2019/10/22/organic-food-
| be...
| slightwinder wrote:
| > In 100 years it might be climate change (of course we
| should definitely try to prevent climate change)
|
| What do you mean? Climate change is happening now, not in 100
| Years. And it's just getting worse in the next 10-20 Years.
| fsckboy wrote:
| I don't know if he's right, but you misunderstood what he
| meant. He's not saying that there is no climate change
| right now.
|
| He's saying that habitat loss is right now the direct cause
| of more extinction events on the daily than climate change
| is right now causing.
| dbingham wrote:
| You're going to need a citation for the statement that
| organic farming releases more greenhouse gasses. That would
| be a deeply un-intuitive finding, and even with that citation
| I would want to scrutinize it carefully.
|
| Organic farming builds soil, where chemical farming strips it
| away. Organic farming has no dependencies on fossil fuels,
| but fossil fuels are used to create the fertilizers that
| chemical farming depends on. Any analysis of the comparitive
| greenhouse gas emissions needs to include a full lifecycle
| analysis of the fertilizers and pesticides used in
| conventional industrial farming. And I really, seriously
| doubt that will find lower greenhouse gas emissions in
| chemical farming.
|
| As for habitat loss - organic farming done right provides
| ecosystem services. Not as well as fully wild habitat, it's
| true, but it's not totally dead space and does support the
| ecosystem. Where as conventional, industrial farming is worse
| than dead space - it creates a death zone where anything that
| goes there dies.
|
| So even if organic farming is a little bit less space
| efficient, on total it is better for the ecosystem because it
| provides positive habitat, as opposed to the negative habitat
| of conventional farming.
|
| I would also challenge your assertion that its less space
| efficient, since there have been other studies that have
| found it can be equivalent when done right and given the
| right conditions: "Under certain conditions--that is, with
| good management practices, particular crop types and growing
| conditions--organic systems can thus nearly match
| conventional yields, whereas under others it at present
| cannot." [1]
|
| We've also spent a lot less time optimizing organic farming
| on a large scale than we have conventional industrial
| farming. So there are likely substantial efficiency gains yet
| to be found. I don't think you stand on firm ground declaring
| that organic farming is worse, environmentally, in the long
| term. The harms of industrial farming are extensive and
| extensively documented.
|
| [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11069
| luc4sdreyer wrote:
| The third link talks about it in detail:
|
| https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/10/22/132497/sorryorg
| a...
|
| The "natural" pesticides used by organic farming can also
| bioaccumilate, that doesn't sound like good soil management
| to me. [1]
|
| As for the rest of it: it doesn't really matter what's
| possible in theory. Research is awesome and should
| continue. But like I said, we're losing dozens of species
| per day. We have to choose whatever is most cost and land-
| efficient today (else people will starve).
|
| It's true that some organic crops are sometimes
| environmentally better. But the only question is how much
| better or worse it is today, on average. Unless you have a
| cheap and effective way that will guarantee that certain
| standards are maintained on 90% of the organic farms on the
| planet. I don't know of such a mechanism. Costs will be
| minimized and rules that decrease yield will be skirted.
|
| A global carbon tax and some sort of land use tax (I don't
| know how else natural land could be protected) would solve
| most of these problems but I don't see that happening
| anytime soon.
|
| [1] https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2020/07/23/organic-
| fungic...
| COGlory wrote:
| Organic and permaculture are very different things. Studies
| have shown organic farms use more fertilizer than non-organic
| to produce the same yield.
| noasaservice wrote:
| Citation please?
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| These results may be skewed by use of non-GMO/GMO crops,
| which tend to correlate with organic/non-organic farming.
| Organic farming methods can be used with GMO crops, however.
|
| Important note: not all GMO is done to vendor lock farmers,
| most of it is actually beneficial to food quality and
| availability
| simiones wrote:
| I think studies in the EU, which bans GMOs but does plenty
| of non-organic farming, should address this. However, I
| don't know of any to cite, or what the results may be.
| pueblito wrote:
| > Important note: not all GMO is done to vendor lock
| farmers, most of it is actually beneficial to food quality
| and availability
|
| I am a farmer, that is absolutely not true. All GMO crops
| are made to be more profitable to the farmer, with the
| goals of increased bulk yields, longer shelf stability and
| decreased water usage. Something like 95% of all corn grown
| in America isn't even for human consumption, they're
| certainly not selecting for food quality and availability.
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| But are they vendor locking you like Monsanto is?
| bluGill wrote:
| Farmers can switch vendors if they want to. Even if they
| have a contract, it isn't for more than a few years.
| Monsanto is used because those farmers have done the math
| and they get the most profit working with Monsanto. Last
| I checked Monsanto was about a third of the seed market,
| the competitors total to more market share. (since I last
| checked Monsanto was bought out, and no longer exists)
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Can you define "more" here?
|
| Manure _weighs_ more than than an equivalent bag of
| fertilizer, sure. Is that bad, though?
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Given any scenario for this type of environmental
| discussion, someone will find a problem with it.
|
| How far was the manure transported? How much CO2 did the
| cow burp? How much corn was trucked in to feed the cow?
|
| There's also the matter of organic fertilizers working
| differently in some scenarios. Blood meal releases nitrogen
| more slowly than ammonium nitrate, for example.
|
| When you cross pseudo-religious beliefs you get in trouble
| as well -- many of the organic fertilizers are animal
| byproducts (blood, feathers, eggshells, urine). So what
| wins for a vegan? Vegetables made with chemical
| fertilizers, or vegetables made with burnt eggshells and
| feathers?
| pcmaffey wrote:
| Also, how far did that manure travel vs fertilizer? etc etc
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| Organic farming also _uses less energy_. That is incentive
| enough.
|
| https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/renewable-agricultur...
| enriquto wrote:
| > organic farming performs better than conventional for
| nearly all crop types when energy use is expressed on a unit
| of area basis
|
| Well, of course. But that's a useless measurement. The whole
| point of hi-tech farming is to increase the density. Organic
| farming is less efficient for unit of food produced.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Organic farming is less efficient for unit of food
| produced."
|
| Do you have data on that?
| enriquto wrote:
| That's the next sentence on the article that I quoted (in
| the abstract).
| [deleted]
| giantg2 wrote:
| I don't see it saying that. It says the results are more
| variable on a per unit basis. This article says organic
| is still more energy efficient on a per unit basis.
|
| https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-
| resource-1...
| guerby wrote:
| Ironically one of the source wrongly cited in the article
| says the contrary (ie organic is more efficient on energy
| per unit of food), see my comment below:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28444679
| bombcar wrote:
| My new HyperOrganic(tm) farming wins - only one seed
| allowed per acre, and minimal energy usage per unit of
| area.
| etempleton wrote:
| But what individual can afford to think 50-80 years in the
| future? People have to do what is best for them in their life
| time.
|
| To be able to think 50-80 years in the future is just an
| incredible luxury most do not have, particularly most small
| farmers, and particularly, I would think, most small farmers in
| a developing country.
| after_care wrote:
| Hopefully nations can think 50-80 years in the future.
| mikewarot wrote:
| >But what individual can afford to think 50-80 years in the
| future?
|
| Parents think that far into the future, as do thoughtful
| members of a productive society.
|
| MBA driven obsession with the next quarterly earnings report
| isn't a universal infection, yet, thank goodness.
| tpoacher wrote:
| In defense of the parent poster, they're making an
| altogether different point.
|
| _Their_ point, as I take it, is that investing in _future_
| welfare at the risk of _current_ welfare rarely makes sense
| to people 's minds, and in fact often jeopardizes future
| welfare as well as current, due to the fact that any harm
| it causes _now_ may in fact carry over into the future.
|
| What you're talking about, on the other hand, is about
| corporate greed and indifference. Very different scenario.
|
| E.g. A struggling parent buying cheap bread for their kids
| today rather than starving them for a month to save money
| and feed them more nutritious food later, is not the kind
| of decision one would attribute to MBA driven obsessions.
| Nor is this parent a worse parent than a more affluent one
| who can afford such an investment without starving their
| children.
| pawelmurias wrote:
| They are a worse parent than an identical but more
| affluent parent.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Parents think that far into the future, as do thoughtful
| members of a productive society.
|
| Ironically, thinking that far into the future results in
| many choosing not to become parents.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > People have to do what is best for them in their life time.
|
| Kim Stanley Robinson's recent novel "Ministry for the Future"
| had an interesting take on this; that our future descendants
| may need legal standing in the court system, and lawyers
| tasked with defending their needs there.
| kettleballroll wrote:
| This is are already happening. eg in Germany, young Friday-
| for-the-future activists won their court case arguing that
| currently lenient climate goals are unfair to future
| generations (
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/29/historic-
| germa... )
| genewitch wrote:
| If this existed (or does) I would seriously consider
| getting a law degree and passing the bar.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| My complaint about "organic" is that it's a case of jumping to
| conclusions, and I fear that this is far too complex an issue
| for that to be a successful long-term strategy.
|
| Organic is typically understood to mean avoiding the use of
| things that aren't considered "natural." Which, in turn, tends
| to mean avoiding the use of both chemical and genetic
| engineering.
|
| To me, the idea that the most environmentally friendly agents
| for use in large scale agriculture just happen to already be
| sitting around in nature seems quite extraordinary. To take the
| case of pesticides and herbicides, I'm certainly no biologist,
| but the general pattern I see is that that nature provides
| broad-spectrum, non-specific poisons that kill relatively
| indiscriminately. And the only reason that these agents don't
| tend to cause a lot of damage to ecosystems is that they tend
| to be used in the way nature intended - that is to say, on a
| very small, non-industrial scale. Think "poisonous animals only
| using it for personal protection," or, "clove oil mostly only
| being found inside of a clove plant." I can't see any reason to
| see why we should just assume that taking these sorts of toxic
| agents that evolved for very limited use cases, and applying
| them over countless hectares of cropland, is actually a good
| thing.
|
| I also worry about just accepting organic agriculture's lower
| yield. Less yield per unit of cropland translates into more
| cropland being needed to feed the humans. Which, in turn, means
| more habitat destruction due to human activity.
|
| Versus, if you allow engineering into the equation, you can
| start to try and engineer things to be less harmful when used
| at an industrial scale. A pesticide that is engineered to be as
| specific as possible to only the pest in question. Or, let's
| dream big, some sort of precision agriculture fertilization
| system that can dynamically reformulate the fertilizer being
| applied to meet the soil needs of that particular corner of the
| field.
|
| None of this is to say that mainstream agriculture is
| automatically better than organic. More that. . . well, at
| least in the USA, the organic program is organized under the
| United States Department of Agriculture's _marketing_ division.
| Which is very good at marketing. They 've done an excellent job
| of convincing American consumers of a false dichotomy that the
| organic program is the sole standard bearer of environmentally
| friendly agriculture. And that's a shame, because some foregone
| conclusions about what it means to be organic have therefore
| trapped people who want to be environmentalist into a local
| minimum that probably isn't nearly as environmentally friendly
| as they could be if their options hadn't been artificially
| constrained by a paragon of crony capitalism.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| A good read on this topic is "Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A
| History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal". It's a sobering
| and surprising book.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| > Chem-based clearly gives higher yields for a period of 50-80
| years, but what happens after that?
|
| You will have to keep moving the goalposts at a rate of 1 year
| per year, because it turns out that we understand which
| nutrients plants need and how to give them those nutrients.
| refurb wrote:
| Exactly. What happens after 50-80 years? We continue to
| fertilize.
|
| The alternative is massively expanding farmland so that it
| can lay fallow for 25% of the time and also to account for
| lower yields.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| We have enough successful regenerative farms now to prove
| that it is an effective way to produce food without
| destroying the environment. Human understanding of what is
| happening biologically in the soil has rapidly expanded in
| the last 20 years.
|
| We do not need to fertilize. It takes about 3 years for
| yields of a farm converted from traditional to regenerative
| to meet pre-conversion yields. The quantity of land used
| doesn't change. It is just managed a different way.
|
| Aside: organic and regenerative are not at all the same
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| >>Organic/permaculture
|
| Hmm; I've never seen "Organic" and "Permaculture" seen used as
| synonyms; I am ignorant of the field, but my understanding of
| "Organic" was that it was more focused on what chemicals are
| and aren't used, largely due to their perceived benefit to
| ingesting humans / some level of "naturalness".
|
| I also haven't seen "Organic" as stopping monopolies and
| oligopolies either. Even if I accept that "Organic" doesn't
| simply mean "Carbon based", nothing in its modern usage seems
| to preclude new monopolies emerging.
|
| - As an end-user, what I found is that same companies that
| offer "regular" food tend to offer "organic" under spun labels,
| preserving status quo (but at higher price and therefore
| profit)
|
| - I assume that "Certified organic chemicals" for farmers'
| usage up the supply chain will similarly have to come from
| _some_ company or another, and I don 't immediately see what
| makes it harder for those to homogenize and eventually form a
| monopoly.
|
| [If it's an allusion to Monsanto etc, again, to me that's more
| of a matter of IP laws, and I don't see what prevents such
| occurrence in Organic field (I also see GMO and Organic as
| orthogonal and not necessarily incompatible, but definition of
| Organic is loose enough and changing enough with
| times/regions/individuals that I won't stake a big claim
| there).]
|
| I am genuinely willing to be educated!
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| A lot of the problem is the definitions are broken and mean
| different things to different people. Plus there's a lot of
| nonscientific or pseudoscientific woo mixed in there too!
| baybal2 wrote:
| > And most are based on a very short-term picture, which
| ignores the long-term costs of chemical-based farming: the
| incredible soil depletion and insect population depletion.
|
| Soil depletion...? How in the world you deplete soil by
| _adding_ nutrients through fertiliser?
| bbojan wrote:
| There are already good references in previous threads (e.g.
| look up anything by Gabe Brown).
|
| But in a nutshell - plants are in a symbiosis with the
| microorganisms and fungi that live in the ground. Plants feed
| them sugars and they feed the plants nutrients in return.
|
| When you add large amounts of artificial fertilizers, plants
| don't need to feed these organisms anymore and this soil
| fauna dies. But the soil fauna also normally excretes
| materials that improve soil quality (e.g. fungi excrete
| glomalin, which binds the soil particles together). So if you
| use artificial fertilizers for a long time, your soil becomes
| dead. And such soil is easily depleted by wind and rain
| erosion.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > How in the world you deplete soil by adding nutrients
| through fertiliser?
|
| "Chemical-based farming" is a lot more than just adding
| fertilizer.
|
| Clear-cutting and deforestation to make farmland. Increased
| crop yields extracts more from the ground. Increased
| extraction of groundwater. Erosion due to killing of weeds,
| heavy tilling, and destruction of forests and native plants.
| Phosphate mining makes a giant mess.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > Phosphate mining makes a giant mess.
|
| No, in comparison to many other mining activities, it's a
| much smaller size of a mess.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Any interest in engaging in the overall point?
|
| Soil depletion via intensive agriculture is a pretty well
| established thing.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Any agriculture depletes soil. That's the law of
| preservation of energy.
|
| If there is no nitrates, and phosphates in the soil, they
| can't magically appear out of nowhere.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| There's a spectrum between "natural meadow that
| replenishes the soil via normal activity" and "intensive
| industrial agriculture sustained by phosphate mines".
|
| Organic farming aims to fall in the middle somewhere.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > There's a spectrum between
|
| There is a law of preservation of energy. Elements don't
| transmute into each other, and don't appear out of
| nowhere.
|
| The mass of biologically available nitrogen, and
| phosphorus in the harvest is equal to the mass of
| nitrogen, and phosphorus removed from soil.
|
| No way around this. When there will be no nitrogen, and
| no phosphorus, there will be no crops. There will be no
| material for plants to use to make its cells from!
|
| The "Organic agriculture" crowd sound to me very much
| like antivaxers, except fighting the agriculture
| industry.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > The mass of biologically available nitrogen, and
| phosphorus in the harvest is equal to the mass of
| nitrogen, and phosphorus removed from soil.
|
| This is simplistic to a fault. Legumes, for example, fix
| nitrogen; we've known for thousands of years about crop
| rotation.
|
| Runoff and erosion - processes that tend to be sped up by
| industrial farming techniques - cause phosphorous
| depletion in a way not due to the harvest itself, as
| well.
|
| There are a lot of factors in soil depletion. Some are
| under our control, via different farming techniques,
| changes in density, etc.
| i_haz_rabies wrote:
| Soil is an ecosystem of insects and arthropods and fungi and
| bacteria. Soil that has been subjected to intensive
| agriculture is a dead ecosystem, little more than a substrate
| to hold NPK.
| kingkawn wrote:
| If your crops are taking up all the fertilizer nutrients then
| as soon as you stop making significant additions the soil
| will be immediately infertile.
| yosito wrote:
| I haven't seen a defense of organic farming based on data
| rather than on "natural" being good and "unnatural" being bad.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Yeah, and I've seen a lot of bad substitutions.
|
| It gets visceral when I volunteer for sorting at the food
| bank. The organic crates roll in, the traditional crates roll
| in -- and it turns out that, say, all the zucchini in the
| organic crates has turned to mush because they don't believe
| in spraying with wax. Crate after crate of rotting, wasted
| produce. Awful. Natural, yes, but nature is so often awful,
| and it's such a shame when we know how to be less wasteful
| and intentionally forego this knowledge in order to indulge
| shoppers' nature fetish. Is this even what they really want?
| Would they continue to insist on the organic label if they
| saw these crates of rotting zucchini mush?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Organic farming doesn't forbid waxing produce.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Maybe zucchinis need wax _and_ preservatives? It looked
| like there was wax on the traditional produce and not on
| the organic produce, but I don 't really know the
| process, I just see the crates of rotting produce at the
| food bank every fall. Those crates are overwhelmingly
| likely to have "organic" on the label whereas their
| picture-perfect counterparts are much less likely to have
| "organic" on the label.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > I don't know the process, I just see the crates of
| rotting produce every fall.
|
| Well, you don't typically spray preservatives on
| zucchini.
|
| Consider the possibility that there are factors outside
| your view here. Perhaps the organic farm you're getting
| the zucchini from is further away, or more successful
| commercially at selling their best product. Who knows?
|
| Without more information, you might just be the anecdotal
| victim of confirmation bias.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| It's not just zucchini. This story plays out regularly.
|
| Yeah, it's possible that there's another explanation, but
| it's also possible that foregoing preservative techniques
| causes food to go bad earlier.
| fock wrote:
| and the 100% organic Zucchini I had recently were good
| for 4weeks in my fridge. so?
| mavhc wrote:
| Does the fridge energy usage plus the terrible global
| warming potential of the fridge's gases outweigh the non
| organic version's increased chemical use?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Newer fridges don't use those gases, and unless you have
| a dedicated produce fridge, it was gonna be running
| anyways.
| abacadaba wrote:
| Can we at least label which products are coated in ground
| up insects?
| fortran77 wrote:
| > Would they continue to insist on the organic label if
| they saw these crates of rotting zucchini mush?
|
| Probably. They feed their kids "organic" because they
| believe it will give them a competitive edge. Not because
| if concern for people who can't shop at Whole Foods.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Should be plenty of stuff in here.
|
| https://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/sar
| necovek wrote:
| Modern organic farming is in infancy still, plagued by a
| number of problems plaguing non-organic farming too (eg.
| transportation, picking unripe fruit and vegetables to let
| them ripen in the storage or on the store shelves and to
| avoid pests...).
|
| The focus is currently on how use of "non-organic" methods
| (pesticide effects on humans and insect--particularly bee--
| population, soil depletion...) are harmful, and naturally,
| humans immediately explore the other extreme, without looking
| for a sweet spot in the middle (of course, humans are
| exploring it, it's just not publicized enough).
|
| And the sweet spot is always in the middle.
|
| Organic produce is popular because it gives you _some_
| reassurance (compared to almost none otherwise) and the
| living standards have increased in large (edit: small, but
| mostly participating on HN :) parts of the world to be able
| to afford it (with their living standard, I am sure Sri Lanka
| wanted to be the first _exporter_ of exclusively organic
| produce, not for their internal use): we are still far away
| from finding the best way, but it 's important to work from
| both ends to help us get there.
| 618033988749894 wrote:
| Here's one: Organic food needs soil, sunlight, and water.
| Conventional food needs soil, sunlight, water, oil
| refineries, chemical plants, etc., plus all the heavy
| industry necessary to support those things.
|
| Here's another: If I recall correctly, after WWII the US
| didn't know what to do with all its munitions factories. They
| realized that the basic ingredients of bombs were good at
| fixing nitrogen in the soil, so they made minor conversions
| to the factories and started producing chemical fertilizers.
| Fifty years later, Timothy McVeigh was able to buy a
| truckload of the stuff and bomb a federal building.
|
| I hope Sri Lanka continues this experiment. Could it be that
| after so many years of conventional agriculture, the soil was
| too depleted of nutrients to be suitable for food crops? I
| imagine that things will improve as the land heals.
| carlob wrote:
| I think you are (possibly deliberately) forgetting that
| there are pesticides which are allowed in organic farming,
| they are just not as effective as more modern alternatives
| and they end up polluting the water table in a very
| significant way.
| palijer wrote:
| How do the organic farms in your argument function without
| modern technology and machinery like tractors or
| transportation?
|
| I think you would be hard pressed to feed a nation with
| organic farms without oil refineries right now.
| 618033988749894 wrote:
| That's a different argument. The comment I replied to
| offered no context and simply relied on the extremely
| broad "good vs. bad." I replied to that.
| yosito wrote:
| > Here's one: Organic food needs soil, sunlight, and water.
| Conventional food needs soil, sunlight, water, oil
| refineries, chemical plants, etc., plus all the heavy
| industry necessary to support those things.
|
| It is absolutely ignorant to believe that organic is better
| for the environment than non-organic. Oil refineries and
| heavy industry are needed to support farming enough to feed
| the world, organic or not. And organic food is more
| expensive, in terms of resources consumed, not less.
| JackFr wrote:
| > Here's another: If I recall correctly, after WWII the US
| didn't know what to do with all its munitions factories.
|
| The War Department did construct 10 ammonia plants which
| made precursors for explosives, which could also make
| fertilizer precursors, and they absolutely switched them
| over after the war.
|
| But ammonia production capacity doubled by 1950, and that
| wouldn't have happened without a demand side to the story
| as well. It also turned out that farmers realized nitrogen
| fertilizers work really, really well.
| username_my1 wrote:
| you didn't provide data, chemical based farming has been
| going on industrial scale for 100 years now... no barren
| land is accumulating. if 100 years aren't enough to
| evaluate long term consequences what is?
| 618033988749894 wrote:
| What is data? In the comment I replied to, the words
| "rather than" indicate that the OP considered the defense
| "natural vs. unnatural" to be a defense based on data. I
| replied on that standard.
|
| I will repeat that I hope Sri Lanka continues this
| experiment. Experiments like this are the only way we'll
| get the data we need.
| gmac wrote:
| I have mixed feelings about this request. On the one hand,
| fair enough. On the other hand, I'm reminded of the paper
| 'Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping
| from aircraft: randomized controlled trial'[1]. We don't
| always need data.
|
| Take chlorpyrifos[2]. It's pretty nasty. It requires no
| additional data to determine that, all else being equal,
| we'll be better off not consuming its residues on our food.
| This is not simply an "unnatural = bad" argument: this is a
| specific chemical with known harmful effects, which you can
| avoid by buying organic.
|
| Of course, the key question is: is all else equal? Organic
| farming does permit some other chemicals, and has a wide
| range of other impacts, including yields etc. So it's
| possible that organic farming is net negative for human
| welfare. But it's unfair to characterise a preference for
| organic farming as being quite as unscientific as you seem to
| claim.
|
| I also think the article is telling us less about the innate
| merits of organic farming and more about the stupidity of
| making huge system changes overnight without training the
| people on the ground.
|
| [1] https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorpyrifos
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Wow. Ok, that's pretty convincing. I guess it's frustrating
| having organic vs regular as the option here. Seems like we
| need more terms to have a more reasonable discussion. Like,
| what is it called when we don't use dangerous pesticides
| but we do use man-made fertilizer? What is it called when
| we use crops optimized for flavor and nutrition vs shelf-
| life and bulk?
|
| I live in the Netherlands and the produce here is pretty
| awful compared with France, Italy or Germany. I'd be happy
| with some kind of arbitrary point system to indicate
| holistic quality. Even though we might disagree on details,
| balancing price, health, nutrition, taste, environmental
| sustainability and labor ethics is really hard for a
| consumer. When you buy organic you kind of hope all those
| things are included, but it just seems so non-rationalized
| at the moment.
| gmac wrote:
| It's true that some of this could be fixed by more
| transparency. For example, the pesticides used on crops
| ought to be listed/available on packaging/at the point of
| sale.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| It'd most likely happen the other way around-- i.e.,
| saying that this produce was grown without the use of ...
| Wait, which ones should be avoided?
| bluGill wrote:
| > Of course, the key question is: is all else equal?
| Organic farming does permit some other chemicals, and has a
| wide range of other impacts, including yields etc. So it's
| possible that organic farming is net negative for human
| welfare.
|
| It is a given that organic is a net negative. Non-organic
| allows everything organic plus everything organic
| prohibits. We might need to reform non-organic in some
| cases, but those doesn't mean we need the arbitrary
| restrictions of organic.
| gruez wrote:
| >Take chlorpyrifos[2]. It's pretty nasty. It requires no
| additional data to determine that, all else being equal,
| we'll be better off not consuming its residues on our food.
|
| Can't you make the same argument with other organic but
| yucky stuff? eg.
|
| >Take cow manure. It's pretty nasty. It requires no
| additional data to determine that, all else being equal,
| we'll be better off not consuming its residues on our food.
| gmac wrote:
| From the Wikipedia page on chlorpyrifos: "Organizations
| such as PANNA and the NRDC state that chlorpyrifos meets
| the four criteria (persistence, bioaccumulation, long-
| range transport, and toxicity) in Annex D of the
| Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants".
|
| I don't think cow manure meets any of those four
| criteria.
| gruez wrote:
| >From the Wikipedia page on chlorpyrifos: "Organizations
| such as PANNA and the NRDC state that chlorpyrifos meets
| the four criteria (persistence, bioaccumulation, long-
| range transport, and toxicity) in Annex D of the
| Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants".
|
| But the parent poster explicitly mentioned that "it
| requires no additional data to determine that"? That
| sounds pretty closer to "chemicals are yucky", rather
| than "chemicals are bad and these studies show that"
| (what you're arguing for).
| dathinab wrote:
| The problem IMHO is that the discussion is poisoned:
|
| > And most are based on a very short-term picture, which
| ignores the long-term costs of chemical-based farming: the
| incredible soil depletion and insect population depletion.
|
| But there are enough organic farming methods which also lead to
| "incredible soil depletion and insect population depletion"
| similar there are non-organic "chemical" methods which do not
| lead to such effects.
|
| So we should focus on long-term sustainable farming.
|
| And sure for most farms the first steps to sustainable farming
| are the same or at least very similar as the first steps to
| organic farming, but the "mid" and "end-game" can differ
| massively.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > So we should focus on long-term sustainable farming.
|
| You cannot farm soil for longer than 8-10 years without major
| nitrogen, and phosphorus replenishment. Actually lived in the
| sticks, and did farm labour in my childhood.
|
| Controllable soils which are good at intaking, and retaining
| fertilizers are sustainable.
|
| Bad soils with unusual soil chemistries can get depleted no
| matter how much fertiliser is dumped. That's true.
| ipaddr wrote:
| What farmers did when I was growing up was they divide
| their lot into 4. Farm on three - put compost on other and
| rotate yearly.
| chii wrote:
| but that cuts your yield by 25%.
|
| Wouldn't a competing farm be more profitable to add
| fertilizers to the soil to replenish the loss nutrients,
| which means they can price out the crop rotation farm?
| reedciccio wrote:
| In most of western world agriculture is subsidized: that
| 25% of farm land that's on a break will be paid by the
| government. The gov mandates and pays also for crop
| rotation.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Profit includes changes to asset value; it's not in the
| farmer's interest to destroy his soil.
| thehappypm wrote:
| You would see a 25% cut in revenue (yielded crops to
| market) but also would see a cut in your costs (you
| aren't tilling, planting seeds, harvesting, putting wear
| and tear on tools, transporting to market) that would
| offset it.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| In the _short term_ such a farm would indeed be more
| profitable, but in the long term? The "less profitable"
| farm would close shop and be replaced by a fertilizer
| farm... and then, as a net result, society is worse off.
|
| This is why regulations (and to combat their evasion by
| other countries, anti-dumping tariffs) are needed.
| kingkawn wrote:
| It doesn't, because you will get no yield if you don't
| let a field go fallow once in a while
| wyager wrote:
| True, but presumably there exist (possibly not-yet-
| invented) high-yield farming practices which fix
| atmospheric nitrogen without the need for fertilizer.
| There's just not been any economic pressure to use or
| invent such a practice, since presumably it would be less
| efficient than using fertilizer. Phosphorous you can't get
| out of the atmosphere so we might not have an easy out
| there.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Phosphorous is released from minerals by fungus in
| healthy soil. Tilling and chemical amendments, NPK
| fertilizers and biocides, kill fungus first.
|
| If you learn about the soil food web you will learn that
| most things we dump on farmland are made available to
| plants by bacteria and fungi. Unfortunately, those are
| the things that we kill by farming the way we do.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Yes, there is, you rotate your crop with legumes. There
| are also crops that gather stable phosphorous and
| activates it, but those tend to be long-lived and thus
| bad for rotation.
|
| What I don't get is why the focus on fertilizers? There
| may be some wisdom on not spraying random poisons on the
| stuff you are going to eat1, but the worst you can get
| with fertilizers is soil salinization, and this is
| perfectly avoidable on any place that isn't a desert
| already, and there are ways to avoid it on deserts too,
| just a bit more expensive.
|
| 1 - So there's a reason for a poison by poison
| discussion, the overall label of "organic" just poisons
| the discussion.
| wyager wrote:
| I assume the focus is on ensuring long-term crop
| viability even if we manage to deplete easily accessible
| mineral deposits used to provide phosphates or whatever.
| Personally I say we liberate everything we can from the
| ground, including carbon.
|
| How do the crops you mention "gather phosphorous"? From
| where?
| frereubu wrote:
| I don't know if you've come across this video on HN before,
| but I discovered it here and it was an eye-opener for me.
| It's a guy called Gabe Brown who transformed his farm into
| one that needed no fertilizer by using no-till and
| rotation. One of the most compelling things is that he's no
| tree-hugger (he even has an uncomplimentary comparison with
| the soil from an organic farm) - his focus is squarely on
| profit, which goes up when you're not forking out huge
| amounts of money on chemicals. I thought I'd give it five
| minutes, then 2.5 hours later I realised I'd watched the
| whole thing.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUmIdq0D6-A
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| There's a podcast called "How To Save A Planet" that did
| an episode on this that I found rather enlightening:
|
| https://gimletmedia.com/shows/howtosaveaplanet/76hmbge/so
| il-...
|
| They focus on two farmers, one a small-scale farmer in NY
| who started with the vision of a sustainable farm, and a
| commodity farmer in Minnesota who was looking for ways to
| improve yield. The Minnesota couple are, like your
| example, not at all "tree-huggers;" they're just people
| who want to survive. And what they found is that they can
| get more crops, for less money, while also limiting their
| exposure to potentially harmful fertilizers and
| pesticides.
|
| They see a lot of resistance from their neighbors,
| because conventional farm knowledge is so ingrained in
| their culture. Running a farm is tricky, and
| experimenting can be the difference between profit and
| losing your shirt. There's just not much will to risk
| losing the land that's been in a family for generations
| on a quest to find a better way.
| AlanSE wrote:
| I saw this on Netflix Kiss the Ground.
|
| Feel like I'm missing something. State universities all
| over the nation have agricultural programs. Are they
| teaching stuff like cover crops? In other words, does
| this guy align with the conventional experts, or is he
| fringe, or does the industry have a schism?
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| He started as fringe out of necessity. He and a few
| others are now the leaders of a paradigm shift. Gabe
| Brown has shown that it is immensely profitable to ditch
| costly chemical inputs and manage a farm as an ecosystem.
| He wasn't the first to return to farming this way. But,
| he has done a lot to spread it around.
|
| Ag extensions mostly recommend the high input farming
| methods. What Gabe Brown practices is more than just
| cover crops.
| throwaway9980 wrote:
| It's absolutely true that you can't keep farming the same
| soil year in and year out and expect it to produce. This is
| why crop rotation is done and why fields are allowed to
| remain fallow from time to time. It seems to me that these
| concepts are bundled in the term "long-term sustainable
| farming."
|
| Source: grew up in the sticks and worked on the family farm
| as a kid.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > is why crop rotation is done and why fields are allowed
| to remain fallow from time to time.
|
| Natural nitrogen replenishment rate is microscopic. And
| it will do _absolutely nothing_ about phosphate
| depletion.
| throwaway9980 wrote:
| Crop rotation implies the selection and plating of
| nitrogen fixing crops. For example, because corn requires
| significant nitrogen, we would plan peas alongside corn.
| Peas are nitrogen fixing and the corn stalks provide a
| good structure for the vines. The next season, the corn
| field would be planted with something entirely different.
|
| Phosphate replenishment can be done by spreading manure
| or using fertilizers. It's a harder problem, but you have
| to _work_ the problem.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > Crop rotation implies the selection and plating of
| nitrogen fixing crops.
|
| Yes, and and the rate of replenishment, even if you dump
| many times more soy straw on the fields than you will
| harvest, will still be microscopic.
|
| It plainly doesn't work for anybody, but people who only
| farm for themselves. It's a grandly inefficient use of a
| scarce resource -- land.
|
| Even if the soil will be squirming with nitrogen fixing
| organisms, and nothing else for many years, it's nitrogen
| intake will be like a single nitrate application, or
| less.
|
| > Phosphate replenishment can be done by spreading manure
|
| And catch god knows how much food borne diseases in the
| process. That's disgusting, and absurd in the 21st
| century.
| brador wrote:
| What makes "good" soil? Is it a particular animal?
| Location? Rainfall? Nearby vegetation?
|
| Can you buy good soil or is it part of the land and just
| too deep/not worth buying?
| brianwawok wrote:
| You can always import good soil sure. Go to a rich land
| place and dig it up. But it will slowly wash away in the
| rain.
|
| Good soil needs lots of dead plant stuff. Bad soil is
| clay or rocks.
| pharke wrote:
| It is a combination of factors, but the primary
| determinants are the mineral composition and the organic
| and biological content. It's more cost effective, though
| time consuming, to make soil in place than it is to strip
| mine it and transport it.
|
| https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/what-
| are-s...
| burglekutt wrote:
| Book recommendation: The Wizard and the Prophet:
| https://www.amazon.com/Wizard-Prophet-Remarkable-Scientists-...
|
| It's a history of the step changes in ag yield due to (generally
| "non-organic") optimizations, and two scientists' competing
| visions of what things we should be optimizing for (feeding
| hungry people now, food security, "naturalness", long-term soil
| health, use of chemicals, energy efficiency, aesthetics, crop
| diversity, etc).
| ur-whale wrote:
| Ideology-based management at its finest
| kunagi7 wrote:
| It's not a good idea to ban chemical fertilizers when your
| whole food production depends on them.
|
| Ecologism may sound like a beautiful thing but it can't be
| implemented overnight and at scale. It's just ignoring decades
| of human progress without a proper alternative.
|
| 6 months later and the results are already here. Sadly, a lot
| of people will die from poverty and starvation thanks to this
| measure. I hope Sri Lankans stand up against this (even if they
| have to smuggle proper fertilizers into their country).
| speed_spread wrote:
| Usage of fertilizers and pesticides also underlies an ideology:
| Massively importing chemicals to boost agricultural production
| at the cost of soil depletion, bio accumulation and health
| risks. At some point, regaining control of land usage becomes a
| matter of sovereignty.
| xyzelement wrote:
| > Former central bank deputy governor W.A. Wijewardena reportedly
| termed the organic plan as a "dream with unimaginable social,
| political and economic costs". He said Sri Lanka's food security
| had been "compromised
|
| Those of us who have managed projects and built stuff can
| recognize the flaw. It is the difference between "what we'd like
| to be true" and having a solid plan for getting there.
|
| Probably having all organic farming is a great goal but probably
| could have been predicted to backfire if done overnight.
|
| Specifically: don't kill your inorganic farming before your
| organic farming produces enough for you to eat.
|
| This pattern of failure can be seen everywhere. Don't give up
| your strategic base in Afghanistan until all your people are
| evacuated. Don't shut down your nuclear power plants until your
| renewables have actually proven to produce enough.
|
| Idealism is great for visualizing the future. But unchecked
| idealism will kill you. I am not sure about the politics of Sri
| Lanka but I see in the US people rally around which politician
| can paint the rosiest picture of the future rather than the
| tempered pragmatic who can make iterative progress towards a
| better place.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| > "a former army general has been appointed as 'commissioner
| general of essential services' to raid and seize food stocks. The
| officer has been tasked to ensure sale of products at government-
| named prices or on custom import costs."
|
| So many leaders, when their anti-market policies fail, double
| down. This will further reduce supply, by demotivating farmers.
| It will help only the lucky few consumers who are first in line,
| before the shelves are empty.
| akamaka wrote:
| Here's a better article that is less ideological:
| https://www.news18.com/news/explainers/explained-why-sri-lan...
|
| In summary, Sri Lanka has been facing an economic crisis and is
| struggling to pay for imports with rising exchange rates. One of
| the effects of this has been a push to reduce dependence on
| foreign imports across many sectors -- including fertilizer.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > In summary, Sri Lanka has been facing an economic crisis and
| is struggling to pay for imports with rising exchange rates.
| One of the effects of this has been a push to reduce dependence
| on foreign imports across many sectors -- including fertilizer.
|
| I was following it as well, but still got dragged into off-
| topic.
|
| The root cause was the current Marxist government committing a
| complete fiscal suicide, and then trying ham-fistedly to ban
| people from spending _their_ Dollars under every silly pretext.
|
| Sri Lanka is a DEEEPLY DEEEPLY indebted nation after two
| previous governments, the current opposition's one, and
| previous incumbent's government maxed out country's credit card
| to buy votes, and draw fictional economic growth from debt.
|
| P.S. And ironically, the complete economically inane political
| leadership will now smash Lanka's FX account even more by
| destroying the few of country's export items.
| duxup wrote:
| >As the country saw an economic boom in the post-LTTE years, it
| increasingly turned to foreign borrowings through the issue of
| sovereign bonds. But outside of tourism and certain exports,
| the country hardly managed to ensure it was attracting enough
| FDIs and foreign funds to meet its rising debt obligations.
|
| So was this economic boom purely internal demand as a result of
| the borrowing?
| baybal2 wrote:
| > So was this economic boom purely internal demand as a
| result of the borrowing?
|
| Yes, correct. The two consequent previous governments
| borrowed like crazy to pull "economic development" like a
| rabbit out of a hat.
| duxup wrote:
| I guess it's common just sad to see.
|
| Not like you can "just do it and be a bigger economy / sell
| stuff" but you gotta get some sort of economic output that
| results in exports or ... something there if you're going
| to borrow, otherwise the result is inevitable.
| coldcode wrote:
| This should be the article discussed. It barely mentions
| organic farming, other than concerns about the lack of
| fertilizer.
| natmaka wrote:
| Indeed. This is a political (since 2018) and mainly financial
| crisis, and an attempt to adopt some organic practices is one
| of the effects.
|
| http://www.srilankaguardian.org/2021/07/sri-lanka-
| manufactur...
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/business-58390292
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