COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (Reuters) — Sri Lanka rolled back its goal to become the first country to fully adopt organic farming on Dec. 1 by removing the ban on the use and importation of chemical fertilizers after months of mass protests by farmers and a surge in food price inflation.
The government had completely banned chemical fertilizers when it unveiled a new agricultural policy in April.
Explaining the U-turn at a cabinet briefing, agriculture minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage said only the private sector would be allowed to resume imports, which would be expensive and a subsidy for chemical fertilizers would not be reinstated.
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“As a country that is sensitive to the people, because farmers have asked us to do this, cabinet decided to voluntarily rescind the gazette notification banning imports,” he added.
The ban on all chemical fertilizers and pesticides was implemented April 26, prompting thousands of farmers to protest and demand the government adopt a hybrid policy to allow organic and chemical fertilizer.
The chemical fertilizer ban, combined with bad weather, led to falling crop yields and contributed to inflation hitting a 47-month high of 8.3 percent in October with food inflation at 11.7 percent.
Aluthgamage said yields of about 32,000 acres of vegetables had been affected by bad weather but the government would provide compensation to farmers.
Sri Lanka has more than two million farmers and up to 70 percent of its 22 million people are directly or indirectly dependant on agriculture.
During the main rice cultivation season in 2019, Sri Lanka produced 3.5 billion kilograms of the grain. Agriculture experts predicted output could fall as much as 43 percent this year due to the import ban.
Jeevika Weerahewa, an agricultural economist at Sri Lanka’s Peradeniya University, said paddy yields could drop by 30 percent and corn by 50 percent even with the import ban reversed.
Weerahewa said Sri Lanka’s weak foreign exchange reserves, which dropped to US$2.27 billion at the end of October, would impede imports. She said rice yields were not expected to recover until at least the second quarter of 2022.
Namal Karunaratne of the All Ceylon Farmers Federation, the country’s largest farm group that is associated with an opposition party, said farmers would receive little respite from the policy reversal.
“With the refusal to give a fertilizer subsidy, the government has set the stage for high prices. The only winner here are the private sector fertilizer import companies,” he said.
