By Saman Indrajith

Removing the subsidy and asking the farmers to buy their fertiliser requirement would have been the right answer to the problems created by the excessive use of chemical fertiliser, State Minister of Urban Development, Waste Disposal and Community Cleanliness, Dr. Nalaka Godahewa said.

Godahewa said that he was not sure whether anyone had understood the current fertiliser issue correctly. People were talking about ‘solutions’ and fighting over them without asking what was the ‘issue’ in the first place.

“Don’t we remember the public outcry against chemical fertiliser several years back? That was mainly because of the health issues created by the use of chemical fertiliser. The former president even requested the Chinese government to set up a kidney hospital in Polonnaruwa. That was because kidney diseases had become so widespread amongst the farming communities in the Polonnaruwa district. Our Doctors kept publishing research papers on how the health of our younger generation is affected by consuming food produced using chemical fertiliser. It was indeed a big issue. The list goes on and it was a no-brainer that the excessive use of chemical fertiliser was becoming harmful to society,” he said.

Chemical fertiliser was used all over the world to increase crop productivity, while It had a positive impact on the yield but the excessive use of chemical fertiliser could lead to several other problems, Dr. Godahewa said.

“Then what we should have discussed in the first place would have been how we can reduce the excessive use of chemical fertiliser. To answer that question one should have discussed why farmers were using too much chemical fertiliser on their lands,” he said.

One obvious answer would have been the availability of free fertiliser subsidies, which could be statistically proven. When the government stopped the fertiliser subsidy a few years back the amount of fertiliser imports to the country reduced drastically. But when the government restored fertiliser subsidies, the demand almost doubled. So it was very clear that the farmers used chemical fertilier more than what they needed when it was given free, he said.

The State Minister said: “Removing the subsidy and asking the farmers to buy their fertiliser requirement would have been the right answer. Then the use of fertiliser would have been more efficient. Obviously this wouldn’t have been politically popular. The second point we should have discussed would have been the availability of chemical fertiliser less harmful to the users. Technology is moving fast and the world is experiencing new innovations all the time. Instead of going for the cheapest source for buying, successive governments should have introduced some regulations on the types of fertiliser that can be imported”.

The recent decision of the government to import nano-nitrogen fertiliser could be a move in the right direction as it seemed to be a less harmful, technologically advanced product from the information currently available, he said

Organic farming was an obvious solution to reduce damage to the environment, Dr. Godahewa said. However, it couldn’t be the only solution.

“There must be other answers. I already pointed out two such answers above. Today we act as if our whole objective is to shift our entire cultivation to organic fertiliser. But is it what we want in the first place or is this all a big miscommunication? I strongly feel where we are going wrong is too much emphasis on a solution without asking what was the issue in the first place,” he said.