In the wake of the fertilizer ban, announced in April 2021, tea farmers saw their yields plummet by half, while entire plantations suffering heavy financial losses due to crop failure, contributing to farmers falling into poverty. While all the leaves come from the same trees, different leaves and different processes yield half a dozen varieties of tea, with varying purity, strength, and taste.
Tea being filtered at the Kinnelan tea factory in Ella, Uva province. Image by Joanik Bellalou.Īgronomists and economists had warned against such a drastic switch, predicting correctly that Sri Lanka would suffer extensive financial losses due to the imminent failure of the agricultural sector, in particular the island’s tea industry, world-renowned for producing some of the finest teas. Without fertilizer, tea plants aren’t sprouting new leaves as quickly as before, which means there’s less for the tea pickers to pluck, which in turn means reduced earnings for the workers. He touted health and environmental benefits as the twin reasons for the decision. The Viyath Maga agenda was to push for reforms, under the mantra of “Visions of Prosperity and Splendor,” which covered a wide array of topics, including a transition to fully organic agriculture.īased on their input, and without consulting experts in agriculture or related fields, Rajapaksa announced an overnight ban on chemical fertilizers, effectively forcing farmers to shift to organic farming. Months later, following Rajapaksa’s victory in the election, several members of the Viyath Maga were swept into parliament as well as key cabinet posts - most notably the Ministry of Agriculture, an all-important body in a country whose economy is largely agrarian. After spending three hours in the tea plantations at the Bluefield tea factory in the central district of Nuwara Eliya, tea pickers return to the factory to weigh their pickings, which typically amount to 2-4 kilograms, or about 4-9 pounds. He was speaking before a gathering of the Viyath Maga, an association of professionals from various walks of life who had pledged their loyalty to the candidate.
It was important simply for politicians to understand national needs and to address them through national policies. In the months leading up to Sri Lanka’s presidential election in November 2019, leading candidate Gotabaya Rajapaksa spoke about the need for leaders to implement policies without arguing about the law. Several months after the aggressive shift, Sri Lanka’s agricultural output has plummeted by 20%, while farmers, who account for 27% of the country’s workforce, have been driven into acute poverty and desperation.The government sold it as a shift to organic agriculture that would make Sri Lanka the world’s first toxin-free nation, but in the process disregarded warnings by academics and agronomists about the disastrous economic fallout.In April 2021, then-president Gotabaya Rajapaksa abruptly banned imports of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, in an attempt to preserve Sri Lanka’s fast-depleting foreign currency reserves.
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