Sri Lanka closes schools and limits work to combat fuel shortage
NPR Online NewsAPR 1 2022
The ongoing food shortage in Sri Lanka is the cursed legacy of deranged policies enacted by the former Pres. Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who imposed a total ban on agrochemicals. While there was indeed wide support to turn the island into the world's first fully-organic producer of food, this process should have been phased in. Groceries began to run out, forcing the country to rely on imports when foreign reserves were already in a dire situation.
A more strategic plan and a realistic time frame would certainly have worked better for the nationwide transition to organic agriculture, but blaming this decision for Sri Lanka's current food crisis is nonsensical. The origins of this crisis are, in fact, the country's financial crisis and its long-standing dependence on imported food and chemical inputs at a large scale, which caused the ban to be short-lived. Going organic is not a problem, but rather a solution to reduce this vulnerability and ensure sustainable and affordable food production.