The Organic Disaster In Sri Lanka and Some Things to Keep In Mind Going Forward

After the Sri Lankan government said everyone had to farm organically, the farmers made so little money in the next harvest, due to collapsing yields, that they couldn't afford inputs for the next crop. Coming on top of the Covid and a sovereign debt that was barely manageable under the old farming system, the economy collapsed.*

The country is still reeling

From the journal Nature, April 10:

Sevenfold variation in global feeding capacity depends on diets, land use and nitrogen management 

Abstract

Harvested food carries a fraction of the nitrogen applied through fertilization; the remainder is typically lost into the environment, impairing planetary sustainability. Using a global agriculture model that integrates key drivers of food production and nitrogen cycling, we simulated upper bounds to global feeding capacity—and associated nitrogen pollution—as a function of nitrogen limitation under organic and industrial fertilization regimes. We found that the current agricultural area could feed ~8–20 billion people under unconstrained industrial fertilization and ca. 3–14 billion under organic fertilization. These ranges are inversely correlated with animal proteins in human diets, and are a function of feed–food competition, grassland-to-cropland allocation and—in the case of organic fertilization—nitrogen use efficiency. Improved nitrogen use efficiency is required to bring nitrogen pollution within planetary sustainability limits and is also essential in narrowing down food productivity gaps between organic and industrial fertilization regimes.

*From The World Bank

And previously:

From July 2022's "Sri Lanka As A Testing Ground For Some Of The WEF's Ideas": 

Here's an interesting paragraph:

"....Sri Lanka’s situation exposes the true cost of living and the cost of ownership. In a 

performance economy, which encompasses one of the economic principles of a circular 

economy, a smaller number of asset owners will take custodianship of assets to keep 

them in use and provide services to many users based on consumption....."

That's from "How a circular economy could help tackle Sri Lanka's economic crisis", World Economic Forum, July 5, 2022.

"Sri Lanka defaults on entire $51 billion external debt"

Yeah, I Got Your Organic B.S. Right Here: "Sri Lanka’s 2022 crisis will hurt for years to come"

South Asian island nation relies on international aid to stave off starvation