by Asoka Abeygunawardhana-
September 24, 2016, 12:00 pm
The "Toxin-Free Nation" is a development paradigm reengineering decision of the government. It plans to correct the agrarian sector which has hitherto been stood on its head by poisonous, nation debilitating reductionist methods. It is critical that thought provoking debate ensues as to whether it will guide us to global glory or set us on a road to doom. Some media organizations have not only provide wide exposure to the topic but have also been highly critical of these efforts. However, it is clear that most of the detractors haven’t even bothered to read the widely available multilingual document. Therefore, as one of its formulators, it is my duty to clarify the various issues.
A toxin-free world:
Some press articles claim that this program has been formulated by a group of traditionalist, nationalist, island trapped frogs-in-the-well with no clue on what modern science says about the subject. The reality is that this strategy is rapidly being mainstreamed across the planet as a key to sustainable development. We know that the industrial revolution completely changed the development direction of mankind. The speed of change escalated rapidly, people thought economic development and social environments were the only factors worth considering and that everything that had gone on before was simply dumb. Wearing pink tinted spectacles, mankind careened downwards from heaven to hell and the planet went from sustenance to destruction and is currently teetering on the brink of annihilation. So claim not the traditionalists but the scientists! Freeing the world of this mad drive to doom and setting ourselves on the path of equitable development should have occurred five decades ago. However, victimized by capital we let multination corporations pawn mankind’s future for a brief burst of profit today.
This paradigm has resulted in irreversible damage to some life-critical sectors, two of which are biodiversity and the climate. Loss of biodiversity is directly bound to agriculture and climate change is firmly tied to burning fossil fuels. Even now, the planet has warmed up by an average of 1 degree Celsius. Mankind cannot now prevent it rising by a further degree.
The Rio summit of 1992, the biodiversity and climate change framework convention are seen as responses to these threats. 25 years later, in 2015, the COP 21 agreements neutralized contention between southern and northern states towards global sustainability. We are now transiting from destructive to sustainable development. The move to renewables is already global and cannot be stopped by the petrodollars of the fossil fuel mafia. The move to organic is already global and cannot be stopped by the agro-dollars of the agrochemical mafia.
Reductionism vs holism:
Science is not the gospel. As knowledge expands, so too the conclusions and proofs of science. About a century ago, mainstream scientific thought revolved around reductionism within which mankind strove to understand nature by breaking it down into component parts. Modern agriculture, resulting from developments during WW II were released to the planet via a reductionist agrarian paradigm optimizing profit of a given parcel of land. Lauding monoculture, all plants that were not profitable were considered to be weeds. Tasty, nutritious food plants became "weeds" and chronic application of toxins to eradicate these plants became the signature of reductionism.
The scientific basis of holism is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Rejects the idea of studying components to understand the whole as scientifically untenable it studied the entire system as a single unit to properly understand it. Reductionism maintains that changes in nature are linear but holism understands that it is cyclic and that nature exists in a state of dynamic equilibrium. We must remember that we are living in 2010-2020 and not in the 50s and that the scientific world rejected reductionism over five decades ago. Unfortunately, so-called scientists still regurgitate an outdated, outmoded development paradigm while laughably claiming that it is "modern" and sneering at more recent scientific thinking.
The Ten Point plan:
Those who criticize the toxin-free nation program all have one thing in common: They haven’t bothered to read it, let alone understand it. Instead, they sound off on assumptions committing scientific perjury in the process. Mudslinging based on selective reasoning is not going to benefit the country. Therefore, I earnestly urge the critics to read the plan in full before taking off at a tangent. It can be freely obtained in all three languages from www.sema.gov.lk. Bear in mind that it is a foundation document amenable to constructive criticism.
While it is important, the entire strategy cannot be fully treated here. Yet it is my responsibility to provide the reader with a brief on the sectors and thrusts that are covered therein. These include methods of providing crops with toxin-free fertilizer, organic pest control methods, irrigation aimed at optimizing natural agriculture and methods for designing future water supply projects, the manufacture and wide availability of new equipment for natural agriculture and post-harvest activities, storage and retail methods, loss minimizing transportation systems, land reform for toxin-free agriculture, acceleration of research into organic agriculture, protection of gene and intellectual rights and demand side awareness on optimizing cooking techniques and consumption patterns are all explained succinctly in this foundation plan.
The fertilizer subsidy:
Organic agriculture was weakened due to the step-motherly treatment afforded to it that that left it ostracized for decades and the vanguard of this marginalization was the fact that subsidies were only provided to agrochemicals. The organic farmer did not even have a farmers’ insurance.
This meant organic agricultural practice was limited to the growing of indigenous varieties which by nature yielded lower which in turn ratcheted up their price making agrochemical produce poor-person food and organic produce rich-person food. Thus, although farmers engaged in organics obtained a higher price for their produce the consumer was afforded no possibility of purchasing them. One of the key decisions of the government was to eradicate this inequity and afford the subsidy to all farmers thereby allowing them to choose their input types. Here, there is no cause for fertilizer manufacturers to be alarmed. Contrary to the claims made by the cat’s-paws of the multinational corporates, no chemical fertilizer that adheres to the proper standards has been banned.
Standing organic agriculture on its own feet:
With the conversion of the fertilizer subsidy into a farmer subsidy, organic agriculture can now be expanded to improved varieties as well. The strapline of this initiative is "the same nutrition for the same price" means that the organic farmer can now produce the same yield at the same price and enables the consumer to pay similar prices for organics as then currently pay for non-organics. This in turn eliminates the fear that the country will be plunged into a food shortage.
The key to organics coming into their own is to ensure that they get the right type of nutrients in the right proportions. Agro-toxins have destroyed the soil as well as microbes vital for nutrient absorption by plants. Small commercial farmers cannot use tons of organic fertilizer so the government plans to use modern technology to improve the entire ecosystem as a whole through modern farming techniques to improve soil fertility, technology for the replenishment of microbes and the removal of barriers for the production of organic fertilizer. In lieu of bringing in a few foreign fertilizer manufacturers, the government plans to create more than 100,000 local entrepreneurs to provide these vital inputs.
Some so-called agronomists pontificate that agriculture is not possible without imported urea. However, any scientist who knows the nitrogen cycle of nature will never spread such fallacies in the name of science. The claim that atmospheric nitrogen can only be absorbed by plants mixed with heavy metals and fossil fuels is an earth shattering lie. Microbes that live with legume plants can do this extremely well. Modern science simply speeds up this process.
The Kidney disease
disaster:
Chronic kidney disease is driving farmers away from traditional farm lands and the suffering of families whose members have succumbed to the disease is a woeful national tragedy. Therefore a key responsibility of the government is eradicating all factors that are at the root of this. Multinationals, fronted by so-called scientists are currently conducting an aggressive campaign to spread the historic lie that there is no connection between agrochemicals and kidney disease when WHO reports have clearly stated that agrochemicals are one of its key contributors.
The myth of glyphosate:
Before the advent of this horror toxin, the farmer cleared the land for cultivation by a grass-cropper, weeder or tractor. Glyphosate has caused more damage to the soil than the earlier slash-and burn practice of farmers. Glyphosate is used before cultivation. Pests infest a parcel of land after cultivation. Therefore, glyphosate is not a pesticide. It causes the utter destruction of many animals and microbes that support farmed crops. Such is the destructive havoc caused by glyphosate that the ban on it is comparable to the ban on dynamiting fish.
It is the rice plant that finds it difficult to compete with weeds but it’s been proven that it can grow without glyphosate. If rice can be grown without it, then, tougher crops such as maize and tea should not have any problem at all. All that is required is a mindset change in farmers in soil preparation while protecting themselves.
A new value to agriculture:
Agriculture in Sri Lanka has come to the brink of its own destruction with the chronic use of agro-toxins rapidly decreasing the contribution of this sector to the national economy. The family-economy of farming families collapsed completely. Female members of farming families were forced to go to the middle-east to provide unskilled labor and the children had to offer themselves to the temporary unskilled labor market of the construction industry in urban centers.
The toxin-free nation program offers a high impact path towards regenerating the agrarian sector. Further to achieving self-sufficiency in toxin-free foods, our farmers will be able to go to the lucrative global market for high quality organics with their produce and products under the brand "If it is Sri Lankan, it is toxin-free!" The profit of these exercises is for immediate enjoyment of both farmers and consumers.
