Essay by Eric Worrall
According to Carbon Brief, the success of organic farming in Cuba and the US shows that Sri Lanka’s failure is due to incompetence, not a lack of agrochemicals.
Q&A: What does the world’s dependence on fertilizers mean for climate change?
July 11, 2022
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Global fertilizer production causes about 1.4% of CO2 emissions annually, and Fertilizer use is a major contributor to non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions.
Now, scientists and farmers are faced with a new dilemma: how to feed a still-growing population while reducing the impact of agriculture on the climate and environment.
Some are trying to stop their fertilizer use altogether, while others are looking for ways to reduce nutrient loss by optimizing fertilization and management. And others are trying to recover lost nutrients from waste, where they can be recycled back to the farm.
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In recent decades, a number of countries have attempted to stay away from synthetic fertilizers use. Some may provide a roadmap to do so successfullywhile others serve as a cautionary tale.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the island nation Cuba – still under a US blockade and without a supply of agrochemicals or other mechanized equipment – was forced to find a new way to grow crops. In the decades since, Cuba has application of farming methods on a large scale. Meanwhile, The water quality of rivers and waterways has improved significantly since agronomy became the norm.
However, the transition away from synthetic inputs in Sri Lanka has been markedly less smooth. Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa announced a ban on the import of agrochemicals in the spring of 2021 in an effort to make the country’s agriculture more sustainable. The Agricultural Economics Association of Sri Lanka warning President that farm output and income will plummet and food insecurity will increase as a result of the policy, and the decision was met with widespread opposition. Rajapaksa soon withdrew some provisions of the ban, but the protests have continued consequences of rising food prices and food shortages, along with a national economic crisis.
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But Nina Pratera rancher in Arkansas and a soil scientist in National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT), told Carbon Brief that farmers she knows and work with Those who have switched to organic farming are seeing yields comparable to those of conventional farming
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Read more: https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-what-does-the-worlds-reliance-on-fertilisers-mean-for-climate-change/
To suggest that Cuba is an organic farming miracle is dangerous fiction, in my opinion. Even The Guardian admits that Cuba uses a lot of imported agrochemicals.
Organic or starving: Can Cuba’s new farming model provide food security?
Roger Atwood
Saturday, October 28, 2017 20.00 AEDT…
Cuba has never been able to feed itself. It currently imports 60-80% of the food it consumes, at a cost of about 2 billion dollars a year. Two-thirds of its corn imported and its a similar amount of rice, the latter mainly from Vietnam and Brazil. In markets across the country, one can see sacks of rice piled up on the rafters. Cubans love bread, but wheat doesn’t grow well in tropical climates, so it must also be imported – mainly from the United States, except for the Cold War trade embargo, selling food for Cuba to cash.
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“It’s sad when Most farmers in Cuba still use pesticides and chemical fertilizers. They are poisonous, and they get into our food,” said Pimentel, who grows 45 different plants on 4 hectares in an isolated valley in western Cuba. He takes pride in the fact that he never uses any chemicals. However, he is not sure if his farm can achieve certification as organic. The land in the Pinar del Río province was once planted with tobacco, which is notoriously dependent on pesticides. Chemical residues from other crops are carried in by rainwater from neighboring farms.
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Pay attention to the pattern. Communism is not a failure, it has never been done right. The climate models are correct, but predicted rapid warming is masked by natural variation. And now, claim that organic farming has failed in Sri Lanka because the Sri Lankans have taken the wrong route.
It sucks that academics promoting such ideas only increase the cost of home heating and gasoline along with their climate alarmism. But now they are focusing their attacks on the foundations of global food security, and dismissing the overwhelming evidence that they are completely false and catastrophic.
Update: h/t Speed, velocity – Add confirmation Claiming Cuba is a success story for organic farming is nonsense. Cuba just had its worst sugar harvest in over a century. “… The report, citing a spokesman for Azcuba, the state sugar company, blamed the shortage mainly on lack of inputs, including oxygen for sugar production, fertilizers, pesticides, fuel and spare parts for factory machinery. … The report said only 37% of the necessary herbicides and pesticides are available for use this season. …”
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