Guest essay by Kip Hansen – March 11, 2022
Strange Ceylonwas a colony of the British Empire and after 1948 an independent country, in 1972, became a republic within the Commonwealth and changed its name to Sri Lanka.
Its location in the warm Indian Ocean makes it a paradise for snorkelers looking for the best coral diving. That trait has attracted sci-fi visionaries Sir Arthur C. Clarke who made it his home.
Like many newly independent British colonies, it suffered from division and political instability for many years. A 26-year civil war involving the ethnic Tamil population finally ended in 2009.
With peace, relative prosperity until they have one Good idea.
For at least 50 years, some parts of the world’s population have been suspicious of the concept of Organic agriculture. While there are many different definitions of organic agriculture, the basic concept is to limit or eliminate the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides (herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, etc.) ). All in all, this is a good idea – using the natural environment to provide inputs to agriculture and natural pest control methods are more than positives when they can be done legally. reasonable and practical.
When my wife and I are in house building phase, we have used basic organic methods in our gardens and with our animals to produce about 75-80% of the food for our growing family, with a little bit for sale or side trade. Our advantage, of course, is that our health, our livelihood and our lives do not depend on the success of our gardening or breeding. If our lettuce crop fails, we can buy lettuce or eat something else, because we live in one of the most prosperous countries on Earth.
Sri Lanka is not a rich country, but neither is it a prominently poor country. The economic situation there has improved greatly since the end of the civil war (2009). However, a large part of the population lives on the proceeds of small agriculture.
In 2019, Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa promised during his election campaign “to shift the country’s farmers to organic farming over a 10-year period. Last April, Rajapaksa’s government made good on that promise, imposing a nationwide ban on the import and use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, and ordering 2 million farmers to of the country using organic products”. [ source ]
Apparently, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa did not understand the concept of “transition” which should have been “through or caused to go through a process or phase of transition” or the transition of this state or condition to another state or condition. other attitude. In Sri Lanka there was not a gentle or gradual transition from modern agricultural methods that over the decades had brought relative prosperity to smallholder farmers, but a forced abrupt transition. switch to new, untested and unfamiliar methods.
Quote from Ted Nordhaus, CEO of Breakthrough Instituteand Saloni Shah, an agriculture and food analyst at the Breakthrough Institute:
“The results were brutal and quick. Against claims that organic methods can produce yields comparable to conventional farming, rice production in the country fell 20% in the first six months alone. Sri Lanka, long self-sufficient in rice production, was forced to import $450 million worth of rice even as domestic prices for the national dietary staple rose around 50 percent. The ban has also devastated the nation’s tea tree, the country’s main export and source of supply Forex. ”
“By November 2021, with tea production falling, the government partially lifted the fertilizer ban on key export crops, including tea, rubber and coconut. Faced with angry protests, soaring inflation and the fall of Sri Lanka currency, the government finally suspended the policy for a number of key crops – including tea, rubber and coconut – last month, though it continued on a number of other crops. The government is also providing 200 million dollars to farmers as direct compensation and an additional $149 million in subsidies for rice farmers at a loss. That barely makes up for the damage and being subject to the ban. Farmers were generous be censured underpayments massively and excluded many farmers, especially tea producers, who provide one of the main sources of employment in rural Sri Lanka. The decline in tea production alone is estimated to result in economic losses 425 million dollars. ”
“The human cost is even greater. Before the pandemic broke out, the country had proudly achieved upper middle-income status. Today, half a million people have fallen back into poverty. Soaring inflation and a rapidly depreciating currency have forced Sri Lankans to cut back on food and fuel purchases as prices soar. The country’s economists have called for the government to default on its debt to buy essential supplies for the people. [ source ]
Nordhaus and Shah call this “farrago magical thinking, technocratic arrogance, ideological delusions, self-dealing, and absolute short-sightedness”. And they are certainly correct.
The The rest of the world is being set up for an even greater downfall, an even greater disaster, by the misguided missions of governments who have blindly jumped into the NetZero gang without thinking about it. where it will go and where will it take them and their country. Entirely delegating, paralleling what Sri Lanka has done with agriculture, almost abandoning the long-successful transport methods and energy sources and replacing them with the unproven Good idea cars run entirely on electricity and fully renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. Only after a number of grid disasters have the most staunch advocates begin to come to terms with the indisputable fact that nuclear must be part of any transition to less polluting energy production. than.
It is all too clear in Europe and at the gas pumping stations of North America, that the rapid transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy puts entire nations at risk of energy blackmail by enemies. quantity. With border disputes in the former Soviet Union intensifying leading to a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, energy supplies to Europe have been severely disrupted. And they discovered that they had shut down nuclear power plants and closed coal-fired power plants with the lights still on and the occupants of millions of homes heated by abundant natural gas. Russia finds itself at risk. The United Kingdom committed suicide ordering its domestic natural gas supply wells to be mounted forever – which their Prime Minister avoided this week.
Backed by wildly misguided environmental advocacy groups, the United Nations and many of its organizations such as the IPCC and the European Union, NetZero’s folly threatens to destroy the prosperity of modern society. Grand.
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Author’s comment:
We see Sri Lanka’s misstep with organic farming as a cautionary tale for the rest of the world, which is blindly paying the price of NetZero’s policies that don’t seem to have any what outcomes for everyday people – their citizens – in the real world.
Currently, in the United States, people in low-paid jobs in grocery stores, mini-marts and dollar stores are having a hard time paying for the gas their cars need to get to work – spend an extra $25 or more per week just traveling for work. That same $25 was nothing to the elite that caused the problem – it was just the cost of a Starbucks visit to them that they had to pay with a “tap to pay” credit card without overview.
Those who know the dangers of NetZero need to speak up and speak up. The war in Ukraine is giving you – us – the break in the cloud cover and lift the fog that has prevented the public from seeing what is happening and where NetZero is leading us.
Thanks for whatever you’re doing to help.
and Thanks for reading.
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