Moving From Conventional Farming To Organic Farming
By Chandre Dharmawardana –March 18, 2016
Prof. Chandre Dharmawardana
Moving From Conventional Farming To Organic Farming – Jumping From The Frying Pan Into The Fire?
I number of people have expresses surprise about my statement that “Organic fertilizers made by repeated composting of leaves can have dangerous amounts of metal toxins like Cd and As, as plants bio-accumulate them”, quoted from ‘Wholesome agriculture’ for a ‘toxin free nation’?. Others have expressed surprise at the statement that “Chemical analyzes of the soil, water and food have NOT revealed any relevant toxins from agrochemicals.”
The latter is the conclusion that we can derive from the world-health-organization (WHO) and Sri lanka National-Science foundation (NSF) funded study (2013) of the Rajarata environment in the context of chronic kidney disease. The WHO-NSF issued a second report where they speculated on the possibility that there may be some risk from Cadmium toxins in the food. The latter has not been confirmed by subsequent studies, while the absence of metal toxins like Cd, As, lead etc., in the soil, water table, reservoirs and rivers has been confirmed by more recent studies (after 2013) from the geology department, Peradeniya University, by the University of Tokyo and other studies including those from an Australian study.
Professor James McWilliams, a “green” advocate and author of “Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly” writes:
“One issue … overlooked in the rush to … organic agriculture is the prevalence of excess arsenic, lead, cadmium, nickel, mercury, copper, and zinc in organic soil. Soil ecologists and environmentalists … have known for more than a century that … conventional farming leave heavy metals in the ground. But the fact that you’ll also find the same toxins in organic soil has been something of a dirty little secret”.
New Zealand is one of the biggest users of synthetic fertilizer, applying 1700 kg/hectare in 2012. Other comparative figures (per hectare, World Bank data) are, Malaysia,1600, Singapore 3400, Holland 300, India 165, Sri Lanka 198, Nicaragua 50. Both Nicaragua and Sri Lanka have chronic kidney disease of unknown origin (CKDU). There are similar trends for glyphosate (herbicide) use. While Nicaragua uses very little fertilizer and glyphosate, New Zealand which uses more than 34 times has no CKDU.
Singapore (3400) and especially Qatar (11,650) use enormous quantities of synthetic fertilizer while Quatar has to deal with a desert. Singapore attempts to make the most out of its small land area and use modern agriculture. There are parts of USA where the fertilizer use is even double that of New Zealand, but the overall national average is less than that in Europe.
