Srilanka’s downfall and organic farming: A correlation

The world population is increasing annually with a specific growth rate. To fulfill the belly of its citizens, every country puts its efforts to increase its production and productivity. Perhaps, this is the most significant reason why we switched from conventional farming systems to chemical farming so as to increase crop productivity. Because the lands are limited, the only way we can feed their people is to increase productivity. The application of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and insecticides has now become so common that the pesticide residues have now entered the food system and ultimately reached the human body leading to malfunctioning of organs. In severe cases, it causes organ failure such as liver failure, kidney failure, etc. This model of agriculture farming is followed by every country. But to elucidate the effects of chemicals on the human body and on soil, people are moving towards organic farming and natural farming. It is no doubt a good concept and sustainable too. But the major constraint with this system is the low productivity that ultimately causes food security issues in the country as in the recent past of Srilanka. Srilanka uniformly switched to organic farming which leads to low productivity and ultimately increases Sri Lanka's dependency on imports of many commodities such as pulses and other grains from foreign countries. To import the food, it has to have some money that Srilanka was not in the position to pay.

In my opinion, the sustainable model to feed the world is of course organic farming. But we will have to move towards it slowly. Because a lot of time it takes in soil reclamation i.e. free from any kind of chemical agents that was already sprayed in previous years. So on one side, we have to endorse organic farming with minimal application of fertilizer i.e. semi-organic farming system not to create any havoc as in Srilanka.

Recently we all have seen an economic crash in Srilanka that resulted in huge food security issues.  Many reasons could be responsible for this worst scenario but one of the most important factors is the bad policies of the Srilankan government for agriculture. The Sri Lankan government being a saver of their citizens, launched an organic farming system in the whole country.

Organic farming and food inflation

We all are familiar with the low productivity of organic crops. An effort has been made to understand the whole saga of the situation as shown in the flowchart given below.

 

Sustainable Solution

Rather than going with organic farming, we have to first follow semi-organic farming and then slowly switch towards organic farming in conditions with high productivity. As it has been done in Srilanka. We have to take it as a model that should not be followed by others not to put its country towards an economic crash.

Finally, the better choice will be the adoption of semi-organic farming rather than organic farming to fulfill the belly of their citizen. No doubt that the application of chemical agents should be precise and the farmers should be trained accordingly by the state as well as the central government. Because in many cases, farmers do not have sound knowledge that how much amount of chemical agents, they have to spray on the crop.

Ultimately, for a sustainable social life, we all as a country have to reduce our dependency on imports by increasing our total production at the domestic level.