Sunday Island Editorial

Crops and fertilizer

18 September 2016

 

We hope many of our readers both read and digested the very thoughtful article published last Sunday on "Whither goes our Agriculture" written for the "kind attention of our President, the Government and the people of Sri Lanka." The authors including a clutch of retired Directors of Agriculture belong to an organization started last year called the Association of Retired Officers of the Sri Lanka Agriculture Service (AROS) with a membership of around 80 including 27 PhDs, as many or more holders of the MSc degree and graduates and specialists in various disciplines including soil science, plant breeding, entomology, chemistry and a host of other sciences. Many AROS members have experience in agricultural work. It is not necessary to labor the fact that these persons, though now retired, literally know their onions.

In the interest of pragmatism, AROS had kept the number contributing to the final document which we published to less than 10 and these included five former Directors General of Agriculture and two Additional Secretaries who handled the subject. Many former Provincial Directors, Regional Directors and other senior professionals, no doubt broadly subscribing to the viewpoint presented, were not included. What they wrote about was the proposed legislation to ban the import of chemical fertilizers, exclusive use of organic fertilizers, the banning of pesticides and increasing the extent under traditional rice varieties. They warned that such action could lead to a large reduction of crop production and farmers’ incomes and soaring food prices. As large a group as AROS cannot be waved off as a chemical fertilizer or pesticide lobby with vested interests in continued import these products which undoubtedly have an environmental impact. Nevertheless, there has to be a balancing of harmful effects with the positives and decisions that are in the best interest of the country must be taken.

This newspaper and others have in recent years widely published articles written by Ranjit Mulleriyawa whose premature death recently is a great loss for our country. At the time he passed away he was spending most of his time living among communities affected by chronic kidney disease of uncertain aetiology that has cost so many farmer lives in the dry zone over a period of many years. He worked indefatigable trying to find a solution to their problem primarily by harvesting rain water safe for drinking. Mulleriyawa who sometimes used the very appropriate pseudonym rangoviya for some of his articles and had an email address with that name was a truly remarkable man who lived the life he preached. He had worked for many years running a small dry zone farm after taking his BSc and Master’s degree from Los Banos in the Philippines where the International Rice Research Institute that developed the so-call ‘miracle rice’ in the sixties was located. He was for a short period an Agricultural Instructor (AI) in the Department of Agriculture. Gamini Seneviratne, Mulleriyawa’s schoolmate at Royal, wrote in a recent tribute that he was barred from not only a Research Officer’s position but even from one of Experimental Officer. "I was then in the Ministry of Agriculture but could do nothing to help him in the face of the departmental bureaucracy which did not want him even as an AI," Seneviratne wrote. Mulleriyawa has done some very useful recent work on kidney disease among dry zone farmers believed to have ingested toxic chemicals with their drinking water and his findings must be utilized in the decision making relating to the importing of banning of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

The AROS group has said that chemical fertilizers are not harmful to human health and other living organisms provided their quality conforms to specified standards and is used in correct amounts. (Emphasis ours). There is no doubt that these fertilizers have been used successfully to increase crop production and farmer incomes in all countries for over a century and the group says that it is unaware of a single country that has banned the use of chemical fertilizers to protect human health. There are undoubtedly questions on whether there is overuse of both fertilizers and pesticide in Sri Lanka with plenty of anecdotal evidence to back this claim. For example earthworms of play a major role in soil fertility have diminished greatly in this country probably due to toxic chemicals associated with fertilizers and pesticides. Time was when a single mammoty stroke even in an urban back garden yielded dozens of squirming earthworms and ants feeding on dead worms were a common sight. This is now no more the case. But whether there has been reliable empirical work on overuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, we do not know. But we do have research institutions dealing with the major plantation crops and the Department or Agriculture with a long and proud history that can come up with some answers.

Undoubtedly the use of organic fertilizers must be maximized and AROS has pointed out that the Department of Agriculture is fully committed towards the promotion of Integrated Plant Nutrition Systems which include optimum use of locally available organic manures together with chemical fertilizers for all crops. However the group says that the available quantities of plant nutrients in organic manures alone are totally inadequate to meet the crop nutrient demand. It has warned that banning the import of chemical fertilizer will lead to sharp drops in crop production, shortage of food in the country and lower incomes for farmers. AROS has further contended that if chemical fertilizers are banned to protect our people from consuming toxins, we should also ban the import of wheat flour from Canada, milk powder from New Zealand and chilies, onions and Masoor dhal from India as those countries liberally use chemical fertilizers.

The deeply troubled tea industry already suffering from a labor shortage has been hurt by the recent controversial ban of the import of the weedicide Glyphosate. All weedicides and pesticides are no doubt toxic; we are all familiar with some of them being ingested to commit suicide. But the pluses and minuses of these actions must be carefully weighed and the authorities not be stampeded into hurried precipitate decision making on these matters. We are glad that a senior scientific group with long experience and service in the agricultural sector has public spiritedly chosen to speak out. The expertise of such people in all disciplines must be tapped for the benefit of the country and they should be encouraged to express their viewpoints in matters affecting national wellbeing.