Sri Lanka, How To Ruin Your Economy

[Moonlight]

As I'm from a farming family I saw this coming and predicted that it would fail, little did I realise how catastrophic the effects on Sri Lanka's economy it would be, I'll bet those Green nut jobs in the Western World won't be mentioning Sri Lanka at their next conference.

The Dream
From the ethically sourced produce shops of Islington to the chemical-free acres of the Prince of Wales's Highgrove farm, you could almost hear the cheering three years ago when Sri Lanka's future president pledged a revolution.
It wouldn't be on the streets but in the fields — as Gotabaya Rajapaksa vowed in his successful 2019 election campaign to transform the country into the world's first fully organic farming nation.

Poverty
Rajapaksa's commitment to producing 100 per cent of Sri Lanka's food organically within a decade was accompanied by a ban on the use of all chemical fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides.
The consequences have been nothing short of catastrophic. Going organic — the bold, modern vision of the UK's green lobby — has triggered the devastation of Sri Lanka's economy, plunging much of its 22 million-strong population into desperate straits.

Humiliation
The loss of revenue from tea and other export crops vastly outstripped any savings from no longer importing fertiliser. In a final humiliation, Sri Lanka — a country until recently self-sufficient in rice — had to spend $450 million importing vast amounts of it, which the government then had to subsidise.
By October last year, it was desperately back-pedalling, relaxing the fertiliser ban for crucial export crops including tea, rubber and coconut. That humiliating U-turn didn't stop President Rajapaksa boasting of his organic credentials a month later at Glasgow's UN Climate Change Summit.

Deluded
Such thinking may be fine in a domestic garden or hobby farm, but not in international agriculture, according to experts.
Nearly all organic farming, they note, serves only the very richest and the very poorest people in the world. While the latter are forced to do it by necessity, as they cannot afford chemical fertilisers and pesticides, for the former it's an expensive lifestyle choice.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/a...M-LEONARD.html

[Skybird]

I am no farming expert, but I hold the belief to have understood that organic farming only can be maintained for a population of quite limited size - not for the poluation explosion we see in our world today.



The Greens in Germany are following the same course like Sri Lanka. Organic farming is the divine revelation, mass production is not needed, they think, and we of course can easily financially afford it, they imply. Even now with the current grain crisis due to the war, many of them, and the federal minister, do not want to give up on that fanatism. Instead they increasingly want to switch to commanded economy. Politics command what should be, and reality then will bend and bow, that is.



Of course intenivse farming and mass production has its costs, too, it ruins the soil and the microbiome, with consequences that add up and accumulate, leading to ever less fertile soil and agricultural products and foods with ever smaller ammounts of nutrient content like vitamines and minerals, thus needing more fertilizers and chemical agents, leading into a vicious circle. The losses in these, over the past 100 years, have been - excessive, to put it mildly. From my studying of nutrition medicine over the past two years I know that vitamine and mineral content losses of up to 80% over the past 100 years, depending on the fruit, the place it was grown in and other individualising variables, are nor rare at all.



But if we must do this kind of farming and intensive agriculture due to the global population pressure, then the conclusion is the mantra that i repeat since years and years and years now:


WE ARE TOO MANY.

[Kapitan]

Europe as a collective is largely self sufficient in many areas, if we look at the countries individually its a different story however.
The EU is a major importer of feed protein, and fertilizer as well as meats and some luxury crops which cannot be grown in the EU for various reasons. (I'm talking specialist fruits and veg etc)

The UK has imported about 46% of all its food stuffs for well a very long time its relatively stable, the sad thing about UK farming was the EU Common Agricultural policy.

In Principle the policy is sound and has some very good merits however when you put it into practice it can and does fall apart.
You have UK farmers being paid for Pigs, Sheep and cows they dont have yet a country like the UK in the common ag policy having farmers being told you cant produce this this year then having to import the pork lamb and beef from other countries just makes a mockery of the policy.

Of the 3 farms that were near me where I lived in the UK all of them at one time or another were paid not to produce, this produce could have stayed in the domestic market or better still exported outside the EU (which due to market caps would not be allowed under the common ag policy)

When you look at organic farming the sustainability level for a population is just not there, right now I am living in the farmlands of Manitoba the prairie provinces, Manitoba is known for its high quality corn.
The organic farmers doesn't get the same yield as non organic farmers, and due to the time required in the fields to prepare them, cultivate and keep watch over them and yet still only bring home about half the yield of a non organic farmer the price of their commodity is much higher hence the price at the store is higher.

Can a country live off organic farming? if it had a decent sized land mass capable of farming with a relatively small population then yes they could New Zealand is a good example of that.
Could the UK Germany or France do the same? unfortunately not out population size is too big and the farm lands are too small or given over to development.

Can the common ag policy of the EU work, In my view yes it can with a couple of changes.
The common ag policy main goal is stability for farmers and markets and it does do a fairly ok job right now, the problem is the subsidy farmers get for not producing sometimes isn't enough to keep a large property going forcing farmers to sell off land or go bankrupt.
The other side is when you have a central planning institute working out the quotas for the next year if they screw that up (and they have many times) then the country affected is forced to import products that could have been grown or reared in the country.

Would Organic farming work en mass to feed 500+ million? unlikely given the susceptibility to the crops, pests and viruses, lower yields and higher production cost.
There are however community projects that could be workable and some are being trialed in Canada and the Netherlands these are community gardens and vertical farming.
if you can produce that type of result locally and be able to feed the local population with the produce you make in these vertical farms then I do actually see it would be a winner.

But growing on mass for export this way would not be achievable it would only be for locally domestic consumption.

[mapuc]

Skybird wrote

We are too many

Well are we too many, or are the resources distributed unevenly ?

Markus

[Kapitan]

Originally Posted by mapuc

Skybird wrote

We are too many

Well are we too many, or are the resources distributed unevenly ?

Markus

Europe as a whole is around 750 million people, a study has shown that one person would require 17 acres of farm land to be self sufficient in all areas (including meat and dairy) if your a vegetarian the land mass required would drop to 10 acres per person.

So if you said 1/3 of the population of 750 million (250 million) were Vegetarian you would need 2.5 BILLION acres to sustain just that population for the year by growing crops, the land mass of all of Europe put together is 2.6bn Acres.

Now of course the above is just a massive over simplification, because in reality you don't / cant really grow everything in one area because you require different soils, heat units, irrigation, temperature control etc.

This is why trading is required, for example Spain grows fantastic oranges, yet Iceland cant grow any due to their climate but they have great fish supplies.
Ukraine can grow great amounts of wheat, Barley and rye but not as good corn or oats, but Germany can grow great oats and corn so they trade it.

What that does is allow the above over simplified calculation to be split and re aligned re distributed etc.

So are we over populated ? in some ways yes in food supply no

[mapuc]

^ Thank you Kapitan for your in-deep explanation

The next question to our resources is-How many of the population in percentage is eating more than needed ? -I know this is impossible to answer.

Markus

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by mapuc

Skybird wrote

We are too many

Well are we too many, or are the resources distributed unevenly ?

Markus

We are too many, no matter how you distribute something.

And while Kapitan has made an argument on quantity levels, I would add to it an argument based on qality as well. A good share of what is being produced in farming, imo is not recommendable to be fed to humans at all. From the health thread last year that I fed with plenty postings you can see that i would object to a a food regime based on soy, much wheat, any glucose-fructose products, or using these for feeding animal lifestock. While some would say that is criticising on a high, luxurious niveau while in other places people starve or even die from not having food at all, I nevertheless remind of desease "pandemics" we have in the industrialized world that are caused or strongly related to people eating - additionally too much - bad "food". Obesity, auto-immune deseases, silent inflammations, cardio-vascular deseases all are related to eating calory-sufficient but nutrients-reduced and in principle poisonous food.

There is not enough fish to feed 8.6 bn people those ammounts of fish I would recommend to eat - and I talk of Japanese, Korean standards, if all humans would eat as much fish as these people do, which is recommended from health-related point of view, health-wise, the ocean would be empty by now. People would also get grass-fed meat frequently, in my recommended food regime: not necessarily daily, but several times per week, and not big quantities every time, but still: frequently. And producing meat means you need more acres of farming sopil, than if you feed agriclurela fruits themselves to people.

Several meat-alternative producers' stocks have done a dive in recent months, and over the past year or so. I welcome that, since feeding soy in huge quantities to humans or animals, simply is a lousy idea and makes them sick over the years. Can "feeding the world" really mean that we should feed the world into serious desease pandemics and shortend life expectations? And set them on pharmaceutical drug abuse to "cure" them afterwards?

Food, farming, garbage processing, pollution, energy, whatever you take, the conclusion is always the same: we are too many, thus we take too much, we cause too much waste, we cost the planet too much.



We are too many.

[Kapitan]

Originally Posted by mapuc

^ Thank you Kapitan for your in-deep explanation

The next question to our resources is-How many of the population in percentage is eating more than needed ? -I know this is impossible to answer.

Markus

Ahhh but it is not impossible, you can take an average (and researchers do often) but to answer that question you pose I can use my self and my own Diet.

So if I base it on my diet, I am going to whole heartedly say I do eat more than I need, I also waste a fair amount of food, and like many studies have shown I am average in that way.

When my Grandmother was alive she used to cook meals that were size proportion to around the 1940s mark, fast forward to today I will say the meal I eat now is in my estimate near double the size.

Am I being greedy ? yes I am I guess but that's because I don't have the mindset of save for a rainy day when it comes to food when I run out of something I know the store will have 20 different types of the item I want, and the worst bit about having that variety is a lot of that ends up in waste.

What I am trying to do now is sort of reverse that cycle and in some areas I have been successful, I have gone from 245lbs down to 200lbs roughly in the last two years this is because I buy in bulk and make it last and one meal makes 3 or 4 to be frozen.

To give you some idea I will buy on average 8kg of chicken in various cuts, roughly 40kg or Pork (its cheaper in Canada) I have 6kg of lamb and about 4kg of beef 1 Lobster 2kg of scallops, 2kg of Salmon and 2-3kg of various other fish (Haddock cod Halibut) in my freezer. right now
That's enough for me and the Mrs for 3 maybe 4 months, the Mrs will get each meat and package it into portions so we know exactly how many meals we can make out of each.

I do have frozen vegetables carrots peas green beans the main ones, but I also mix it with fresh produce Swede, Parsnips, Mushrooms etc, these I buy as needed.

I Do think though the biggest issue for humans is that especially in the west we love to eat out and expect massive portions and to not eat all of it.
Yet you go to some of the poorer parts of the world you will notice they cook just enough for the meal and that's it there's no scraps or left overs nothing.

With Sri Lanka moving to Organic farming as a whole nation numbering close to 22 million and having 1.37 million hectares (3.43 million acres) of farm land (45.5% of its total land mass) noting that organic crops don't yield as much produce as non organics I can honestly see this experiment being doomed to failure.

With Farmers needing to hit certain yield counts to break even if the Organic farming cannot produce the expected break even yields then is there any point in planting the crop for sale? Of course not there's no point or incentive to do so.

Sri Lanka produces Rubber tea cocoa coconut spices and rice with tea being its most common cash crop, with the yields on all being down I can understand why there is a food shortage and the economy tanked, you simply don't have enough produce to trade.

On top of that crops like rice are hugely labor and resource intensive, Rubber not so much unless they get infested with diseases, but Rubber is no good to you as a hungry person.

[Kapitan]

Originally Posted by Skybird

We are too many, no matter how you distribute something.

The Human population is vastly unevenly distributed, take where I am currently living in Manitoba the province is 3 times the size of the UK in land mass.

The UK population is concentrated in an area 1/3 the Size of the province I'm in right now and number around 67 million

Manitoba population right now is 1.37 million people with the majority of around 750,000 living in Winnipeg.

You cant redistribute people easily but trading your commodities can help create a sustainable population in various regions.

[Skybird]

^Think of my arguments, and add the whole species' global footprint to it. Too many is too many.

Plus erosion kills fertile grounds and forests. We currently live in an time when per day a significant ammount of fertile farming ground is getting lost - intentionally. You cannot easily replace it if you want it back some years later: it takes centuries.

I described this repeatedly over the years, but when I recall all opportunities when somehting i red, an author, a specialist, a book, from various and different scientific branches like oceanography, geography, anthropology etc talked about these issues, and there was a number estimated how many people the planet could sustain if we follow two principles, that all these people have a reaosnable standard in material living conditions and food, and have all the same social rights and guarantee of human dignity, then we cannot be more than 1 - 1.5 billion people.

Obviously that estimation is highly, highly unwelcomed. It spells nothing but troubles. But it makes sense. Unfortunately.

Many others grasp a straw and gloss over the conflict-enriched nature of the status we have now. So they "correct" their estimations upwards. Or ignore that we must talk not only of quantity of measurements, but also quality. So they say we can sustain 8.5 bn, rising. Sorry, no - we cannot.

A huge moral dilemma, but that is an argument only in the world of human thinking. Nature knows neither morals nor ethical principles. It just is. And if we are too many, it will let us know sooner or later, without compassion, and without mercy. What goes up, must come down.

Rummms.

[Jimbuna]

Glad I won't be around to see how it all eventually pans out.

[Kapitan]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

Glad I won't be around to see how it all eventually pans out.

I think by the time it does I will be too busy dribbling and soiling myself in some nursing home.