Banning fertilisers to bring it through black market?

By Prof. Chandre Dharmawardana, Canada

Food and land for growing food are THE basic foundation of life. Whether it be early marauding tribes or colonial invaders, their expeditions were propelled by their needs of nourishment and raw materials. However, scientific advances have now shown how to feed the whole world with very little land and water, freeing vast areas of farmland back to nature if technologies going beyond the green revolution are adopted.

Unfortunately, it is a myth that ‘life was better in the past’. The lost Garden of Eden, the reign of the Maha-Sammatha dynasties, the Golden Age of ancient Greece, Rousseau’s Noble Savage of Enlightenment philosophy or Marx and Engels’ nostalgic but false descriptions of early farming communities, all paint pictures of healthy idyll prior to the “corruption wrought by industrialisation”.

This has even morphed into public fear-mongering by individuals who believe that the food we eat is poisoned. Modern advances in agriculture have greatly reduced the impact of famines even in Africa. Advances in public health has removed infectious diseases. A life expectancy below 50 years in the 1940s when people eat traditional food has become almost 80 in Sri Lanka today. Infant mortality has dropped from 10% to less than 2%.

However, sedentary lifestyles have become the norm, especially among the “elites” whose refrigerators are full of sugary fatty food. “takeout” foods, e.g., Biriyani, Pizza, or “kothtu”, may contain unhealthy ingredients and used compromised cooking oils. That is how Lankans eat some poison in their food. But take-outs, or even the soil and water DO NOT contain significant amounts of bioavailable toxins originating in fertilisers used to grow crops. Where is the data to implicate fertilisers?

Nevertheless, these elites are CERTAIN that fertilisers are a danger to human health! The President has stated that governments must not hesitate to adopt bold policies to protect human health. Others dispute the rapidity of the ban, but erroneously claim that a gradual move to ‘organic’ is ESSENTIAL for health and ‘sustainability’!

Some media publicise ‘opinion makers’ who sell the idea that the food eaten by the consumer IS POISONED. The Department of Agriculture with its world-renowned track record has been sidelined! These media feature ‘scientists’ who say that their grandparents ate wholesome food, and unlike today, DID NOT have cancers, dementias and obesities. Discarding all available statistics, the ancients are said to have lived to 148 years by a GMOA medical specialist” (see https://dh-web.org/green/padeniyamay21Sinhala.html) .

The ancients are said to have had plenty of food. Egypt was called the ‘granary of the ancient world’. Lanka was said to be the ‘granary of the orient’, while Panchananda’ (modern Panjab) was claimed to be the granary of the whole world by ancient writers. These are all half-truths that hide the monstrous malnourishment and periodic famines integral to life prior to the rise of modern agriculture.

Malnourishment is THE MOTHER OF ALL ILLNESSES, and sapped the health of ancients who fell easy prey to infections that had no cures in traditional herbal medicine. But all these well-established facts are thrown aside. A former Speaker of Parliament, minsters and public figures including medical doctors have made the claim that Sri Lankans have been eating poison in their food. Not surprisingly, there are academics ready to support the canard for political gain, or they are so uncritical as to believe the half truths. One wonders if ‘agriculturalists’ who claim that imported oranges have no vitamin C, while the ‘Bibile’ oranges (‘paeni dodan’) alone have Vitamin C, or misidentify a sorghum plant, are wittingly exploiting the credulity of the public?

The proposed ban suggests using the local ‘Eppawala’ Rock phosphate (ERP). This contains similar amounts of toxins as in imported mineral fertilisers. Although low in cadmium impurities, Gunawardena et al report in the National Science Foundation journal that ERP has 23-27 mg of arsenic per kg of ERP. Mining and converting ERP to triphosphate has a high cost and environmental impact. It is cheaper and cleaner to import it. A lot of false propaganda claim that mineral fertilisers contain metal toxins, but the fact remains that even the worst of them, say the Nauri phosphate from New Zealand, adds only virtually UNDETECTABLE amounts of, say, As or Cd to the soil even if 10 times the recommended amount of fertiliser are ploughed into a hectare of soil, to a depth of the plough blade (see: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10653-018-0140-x). The danger of excess use is NOT from the traces of metal toxins, but from the phosphate itself, as its runoff leads to the pollution of aquatic bodies. That is not poison in your plate.

Compost is NOT a fertiliser but a soil remedying agent. It is made by composting farm refuse, animal droppings and such ‘natural’ or leafy products. Fertilisers are supposed to provide essential elements for plant growth. The principal elements are nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) while tiny amounts of other nutrients are also needed. As compost does NOT have significant amounts of N, P, and K, substantial amounts of bone meal (‘gerikatu’) were also used. The cultivation was done in newly burnt forest lands, i.e., ‘Chenas’ where the ash provided some N, P and K. After a few years the spent Chena was abandoned and a newly burnt forest, i.e., a new Chena was used. The compost provided ‘humus’ (carbon material, ‘black earth’) to the soil, making a sandy or clay soil habitable to soil organisms. So, compost is NOT A FERTILIZER. It is mainly a soil REMEDYING agent, adding carbon and microorganisms to soils. Extremely polluted industrial soils are more efficiently remedied using microbe-enhanced biochar (a form of activated carbon) rather than compost. Compost is not the only soil remedying substance used. Dolomite, limestone or wood ash may be used to remedy acidic soils.

Lanka spends close to 40 billion and imports some 1.3 million metric tons of fertiliser per year (http://www.agrimin.gov.lk/web/index.php/en/news-and-events/1492-2021-02-02). One tonne of compost made in the tropics may contain 1-2% N or P while the imported mineral fertiliser contains 40-50% of P. So, replacing mineral fertiliser with compost will require trucks to move some 130 million metric tons of it within the country, burning fossil fuel. Since about ten tonnes of waste material are needed per ton of product, the industry must transport and process 1.3 billion tonnes of farm waste and urban garbage. The local compost will exceed the cost of imported fertilisers by over 100 times.

However, all this is based on the ERRONEOUS ASSUMPTION that compost is a fertiliser. Compost, with a mere 1-2% of the macro-nutrients is only a SOIL REMEDYING AGENT. If compost is given back its proper job, then the amount of compost needed falls back to manageable amounts as indicated in, say, the booklets issued by the Department of Agriculture for the 25 districts.

Politicians and emperors driven by mistaken ideologies have caused starvation and misery in the past. Given the certainty of government spokesmen that Lankans ‘must be rescued from eating poison’ by converting agriculture to ‘organic fertilisers’, what chance has the country to save itself? When unworkable polices are imposed on a populace, although there will be much misery, an unseen underground economy will provide the populace with its needs, but at a price. Well-connected crooks will make money! Although a benign herbicide was banned by the Sirisena government, one of its own minsters who appeared on TV openly admitted that he too used black-market glyphosate for his 30 hectares of tea!

The news of a ban has already caused fertilisers to disappear from the market. A well-connected ‘mafia’ will move in to make the urea and mineral fertilisers available in the black market, miraculously! They may appear under the label of ‘organic’ fertilisers, but having incredibly high levels of N, P, and K, perhaps ‘made by a traditional method used by King Raaavana’, or revealed by ‘Natha Deviyo’ himself. The GMOA doctor who claimed that ancient Lankans lived to 148 years (quoting Pliny the Elder) may claim that Lankans no longer eat poison as they eat ‘organic food’ (and drink bottled spring-water straight from Lake Anothaptha?). Will they live to 148 years?