Switch to organic, okay but not like in Sri Lanka!

The transition to organic production was well on the program of candidate Rajapaksa during his campaign for the 2019 presidential election, given, among other things, the significant damage caused by pesticides on the health of peasants, who are frequently victims in particular of ‘renal failure chronic. But he then proposed to implement the reform over ten years, not from one day to the next!

The immediate result of this crazy and sudden decision was the drastic drop in the production of tea, the main export crop, and that of rice, the main food consumed by the population. The government had to backtrack barely six months after taking this decision, but it was too late: massive unemployment and shortages quickly set in, both in the countryside and in the cities. The rise in the world price ofenergy and cerealsgreatly aggravated by the war in Ukraine, has made imports to this literally bankrupt country unaffordable… and now paralyzed and threatened with famine.

Why did the forced switch to organic produce such a disaster?

It should be noted in passing that, in the democratic countries where organic farming is the most developed, such as Switzerland and Austria, it only reaches 18% of their total production, and that in France, after 20 uninterrupted years of growth in organic up to 8% of agricultural production, this percentage began to drop in 2020. In all three cases, we are very, very far from the 80% organic sometimes dreamed of by the profession and the causes are multiple, as I detailed in the article: Historic drop in organic food: other ideas are emerging on food.

It must be realized that, for these two productions, tea and ricewe are in the monoculture intensive, a completely anti-ecological practice that requires strong fertilizers and pesticides. Their sudden disappearance can only cause disasters.

It takes 10 years to switch to organic tea, and it’s very random

The tea fields cover 265,000 hectares in this small island (8 times smaller than France) and directly and indirectly occupy a million people who produce, mainly for export, 300,000 tons; this small country comes just after China and India for this production, and it is only really competed by Kenya.

Tea comes from the young leaves of the Camellia sinensis, after planting, it is necessary to wait five years before harvesting the first leaves, and then the shrub produces for 50 years. We are therefore essentially in an intensive production which depletes the soil, which constantly need fertilizer to replenish themselves. If we stop applying fertilizers, production also stops. Fertilizers can of course be replaced minerals by organic fertilizers from crushed plants or animal waste, but obviously not overnight for 265,000 hectares!

In addition, we are in a tropical climate, hot and humid, which favors the multiplication of parasiteswhich cannot be confused by crop rotations: caterpillarslarvae, worms, aphids, mealybugslocusts, mosquitoestermites, ants, mites and others insects ruffles. No question of producing without insecticide. You also have to deal with many leaf diseases such as leaf curl and sooty mold or white, red, black, brown or purple root rots, which have disastrous consequences on crops.

In general, the organic tea plant produces 2 to 3 times less than the “chemical”. To do this, it is necessary to do it right from the installation, starting by uprooting all the plants to install in their place mixtures of complementary plants, in particular legumes and trees, which can both nourish and protect the shrubs, permanent farms of auxiliary insects that prey on pests, and the additional production of a quantity of organic fertilizer, in particular via livestock farming. Thus, it is necessary to count ten years of efforts to have the right, in the end – if all goes well, because it is in truth very complicated, to produce 2 times less. In addition, without being absolutely sure of finding markets twice as expensive for this product of ruthless international competition — tea is the 2^e the most consumed drink in the world after water, 3 billion cups are drunk every day.

On the other hand, if the chemistry suddenly disappears, everything stops!

Organic rice is also much more complex than “traditional” rice.

Almost the same thing happens for rice high yield. Admittedly, we are here in an annual plant, like wheat or cornthe two other cereals that are the basis of thefood of the world. But the vast majority of rice is irrigated, on hillside fields, and this cereal therefore requires large investments before production. When we installed a rice field in terrace on the slopes of a mountain, we are not going to do crop rotations to sow rice there for a year, then rapeseed, wheat, sunflower, corn, etc. And so we fall back into the vicious circle ofsoil depletionwhich calls for regular fertilizer inputs, and multiple attacks of predators and diseases, which require pesticides!

Of course, there are solutions that make it possible to earn a living by producing organic rice. But there too, they are much more complicated to implement than the proven techniques ofagriculture chemical. Wherever we can, we must make crop rotationsespecially with the introduction of legumes that enrich the soil with nitrogen. We have experimented in several Asian countries (and even in France) with duck releases cultivation aids. These ducks do not like rice and do not touch it, but on the other hand, weed freely and eliminate unwanted predatory animals, such as snails. In addition, their droppings provide excellent fertilizer. But everyone can understand that all of this cannot be improvised from one year to the next because a government has so decided.

In some cases, you can also mix complementary plants: here, at Javaduring the season dry, some Paddy fields are grown with cabbages and beans under the coconut trees. But it can’t be improvised.

In conclusion, we can paraphrase the famous song by Georges Brassens: To die for his ideas, okay, but a slow death. Switch to organic, okay but slowly and in an organized way, by motivating, training and subsidizing farmers, certainly not by presidential decree.