Organic Activists Evade Sri Lanka Role

At the Genetic Literacy Project, Cameron English rightly calls out "anti-GMO 'rock star' Vandana Shiva" among others for their role in causing Sri Lanka's agricultural crisis:

Sri Lanka ran an evil experiment on its citizens last year. Under the sway of nitwit organic-food activists, the government banned imports of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers as part of an effort to transition the country to all-organic agriculture, leaving the vast majority of farmers without access to the vital tools they use to grow the crops their country depends on. Polls taken at the time showed that most growers didn't know how to farm organically.

English goes on to recapitulate the events that preceded and followed from the ban, calling them "predictable and tragic." He also reminds us that the country's leadership ignored the advice of its agricultural scientists while it devised its plan.

At the same time, the story notes that organic apologists are deflecting blame. Regarding a recent statement about the crisis by the Soil Association (which frequently collaborates with Shiva), Cameron hits the nail on the head:

If you recover, they'll tell you to step on it right, the next time. (Image by Albert Cahalan, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.)

You see, they didn't do it right. Had Sri Lanka only taken a decade to retrain its farmers in organic production and primed its citizens for the massive yield drops that come with abandoning modern agriculture, then they'd be on their way to a green paradise.

Please.

This is a foolish, face-saving narrative. Take 10 years or take 100 years; it doesn't matter. The problem is not the transition period, but the production methods farmers are supposed to utilize. We know that organic farming alone cannot produce the amount of food we need to feed the globe. The research has been done, the evidence is in. This was all known long before the events in Sri Lanka unfolded. Agricultural scientists in the country knew it, and they were ignored. [links omitted, bold added]

Central planners take this tack so often about the results of people attempting to implement their policies that the Babylon Bee once memorably parodied it under the headline, "Socialist Steps On Another Rake Insisting That 79 Previous Attempts Weren't REAL Stepping On A Rake."

My thanks to Cameron English for calling this what it is, evil, and holding these modern Luddites to account with his well-documented piece.

Sri Lanka will, sadly, not be the last time green meddlers wage war on modern agriculture. But with this article, at least the next target will have been warned on how the scheme will be put into motion, the results they can expect, and what the perpetrators will say when their policies are tested against reality.

-- CAV