• Agriculture experts predict looming food crisis
• Airlifting nano nitrogen an unprecedented first for Sri Lanka
• Ceylon Fertilizer Company gets order from commercial High Court against Seawin
By Lankathilaka
The protracted fertilizer crisis from the ban on the import of chemical fertilizer and agrochemicals has become a ticking time bomb and the country is poised on the brink of a national food crisis. Some in the agriculture sector are managing with the fertilizer that was in stock before the ban came into effect but it will soon dry up.
Academics of agriculture like professor Anura Kumara of the University of Ruhuna predict a 30 percent drop in rice production which will result in Sri Lanka having to import 700, 000 to 800, 000 MT of rice by late 2022 or early 2023. This too is a conservative estimate without factoring in potential crop damage from pests like Fall Armyworm which blighted maize cultivations in 2019. The reduction in production could be as high as 80 percent. Sri Lanka requires a total of 2.4 million MT tons of rice a year which is around 100, 000 MT.
The ban on the imports did not have to bite so much. Not many disagree with the principle behind it subject to the proviso that the conversion process will be guided by a roadmapwhich has been woefully lacking. On the 10th of May this year, four days after the government gazette banning the import of chemical fertilizerand agrochemicals including insecticides and herbicides it issued a gazette notice appointing a 46 – member presidential task force to create a green socio economy with sustainable solutions for climate change. Among its 25 action points is the creation of a road map to fully transition from chemical to organic farming and related matters such as the production of organic fertilizer and to build the capacity of farmers for organic cultivation. Reportedly, this task force hardly met and it was eventually reconstitutedleaving out key experts from the tea industry. On the 16th of October another 14– member task force, which also includes members from the previous task force, was appointed for green agriculture. In their six point mandate is the formulation of a systematic program for sustainable maintenance of green agriculture, identifying the organic fertilizer required for various crops and improving the quality of such fertilizer production, producing pesticides and weedicides locally, identifying methodologies and monitoring mechanisms for importing the limited scale possible shortages with high standards on the approval of the Sri Lanka Standards Institute in meeting the requirements through local production, enhancing communication in transmitting to the public the health related socio economic benefits to be accrued from organic food production and consumption, enlisting the active support of the public service in this process and broadening the organic agriculture services at field level.
The transition from the use of chemical to organic fertilizer is not an ambition to be taken lightly. One third of the country’s total land area, which is 6. 5 million hectares, is under cultivation. 2. 4 million hectares of this extent is agriculture land. The decision to convert will affect one fourth or 25 percent of the total labour force of the country including 1. 8 million paddy farming families. is about 7. 3 percent of the country’s GDP from agriculture.
A country’s food security is benchmarked by the quantity, quality, affordability and accessibility to food. Based on the Food Security Index for this year, Sri Lanka is ranked 66th out of 113 countries globally while her south Asian neighbours India, Pakistan and Nepal are ranked at 75, 78 and 80th . Sri Lanka’s position on the FSI is expected to drop to about 80 this year.
Last week the government took the unprecedented step to airlift 45, 000 liters of a total quantity of 3. 1 million liters of nano nitrogen from India to Sri Lanka. It was the first time Sri Lanka airlifted fertilizer and a sign of the grave situation the country is mired in. The nitrogen supplement cargo also flew into an immediate controversy after the JVP’s Vijitha Herath told parliament that a payment of $1. 275 million was made for it into a private bank account. The JVP raised further suspicions about the nano nitrogen. The product is new and had been finalized for mass scale production by the agriculture ministry in India only in March this year. Dissanayake raised the question whether the product could have been manufactured to be specifically sent across to Sri Lanka.
The Federation of University Teachers Association (FUTA) which issued a statement to clear misperceptions about nano nitrogen debunked the government’s claim that it is an organic compound and other characteristics attributed to it.
‘The nano-nitrogen fertilizer of the Indian Farmers Fertilizer Cooperative Ltd (IFFCO) is a urea-based formulation where urea is coated with polymers to make nano-size particles. Therefore, this fertilizer is a synthetic chemical fertilizer, and not an organic fertilizer’.
The nano nitrogen is a nitrogen supplement which has to be used with a basic mixture of fertilizer comprising urea, potassium and phosphate.
Worse was to come in the FUTA statement. Nano fertilizers are not accepted for organic agriculture in Sri Lank. It has only four percent nitrogen and is a foliar spray which has to be applied on the leaf and not the root of the plant. According to professor Kumara the catch 22 situation here is that to apply nano nitrogen on the leaf, the plant should have leaves which it cannot produce without nutrition.
No farmer in Sri Lanka has experience of applying this compound which has to be done with the use of specific tools such as drones which no farmer has experience of using.
The use of nano nitrogen will be more expensive than regular nitrogen. It costs more and will need larger quantities because the nitrogen levels in it are lower. Usually, a yield of 4-5 tons of grain will need 105 kg of nitrogen and if its nano nitrogen it will require 1250 liters per hectare.
Meanwhile, a ship carrying 20, 000 MT of organic fertilizer from China is expected in Sri Lanka soon despite two of its samples having failed quality testing after the detection of the harmful bacteria Erwinia. Early yesterday, a visibly annoyed JVP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake told the press that the Chinese supplier of the fertilizer, Qingdao Seawin Biotech Group Co Ltd, had pressured the Director General of the Agriculture Department to get another sample test done by a third party. The earlier testing was done by the National Plant Quarantine Service, the Sri Lanka Standards Institute and the Sri Lanka Atomic Energy Board. Their request which had been made in a letter dated 22 October, nearly one month after the ship had left China, had also been copied to other senior Sri Lankan officials including the secretary to the president P.B Jayasundara, secretary to the prime minister Gamini Senarath, secretary to the agriculture ministry as well as the Chinese ambassador in Sri Lanka. The Director General of Agriculture has instructed the harbour master in the Ports Authority not to allow the ship from entering Sri Lankan waters. In the latest development on the 22nd, the Ceylon Fertiliser Company obtained an order from the commercial high court against Seawin, its local agent and the Central Bank preventing the latter from making any payments using the LC which had been opened for Seawin.
