> Why did they engage in such a radical experiment? Well, that's where it cut off for me without a subscription. Still, I'm sure it's going to say that the pr

> Why did they engage in such a radical experiment? Well, that's where it cut off for me without a subscription. Still, I'm sure it's going to say that the problem was the overhype of "green"/"organic" agriculture, and that this is a cautionary tale of why we need to stay with modern chemical-intense agriculture. Because I've seen quite a few of those. I'll instead quote from https://science.thewire.in/environment/sri-lanka-crisis-organic-farming-greenwashing/ https://science.thewire.in/environment/sri-lanka-crisis-orga... (I couldn't find the original essay I read which describes the underlying isssue, but was able to find this one with essentially the same thesis): > And yet, the collapse of Sri Lanka’s economy had little to do with organic farming per se, and much more to do with the disastrous handling of its economy. > Nonetheless, the banning of inorganic fertilisers, the reasons it was done and the way it was done is a cautionary tale of how not to embark on a green transition. It should be a mandatory exercise to review these failures as the developing world looks for a stable path as the climate crisis intensifies. > The first thing to note about Sri Lanka’s decision to ban the import of inorganic fertilisers is that it was based on desperation rather than planning. It is true that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s government had promised when it came into power in 2019 that it would shift agriculture to organic farming – but it had announced that it would do so over a period of 10 years, not overnight. > No large-scale plan was drawn up, no public discussions with farmers was undertaken, and the people in government pushing the policies included those who came up with locally made syrups to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. > In the end, the decision was taken for the simple reason that Sri Lanka was running out of money. The pandemic had hurt the tourist industry, and when the government was elected in 2019, it further cut down taxes, leaving it with money flowing out – much of it for vast infrastructure projects – and little to raise. > Between the end of 2020 to March 2021, the country’s foreign exchange reserves plummeted from $7.6 billion to less than $2 billion. It was because of this huge loss of foreign currency, and the cost of importing inorganic fertilisers that Sri Lanka largely does not manufacture, that the country imposed a ban on it – forcing two-thirds of its population that depends on agriculture to suddenly scramble to deal with the fallout.