Healthy is Unhealthy? Confused? Sustainability hampers Survival? Further Confused? Read this interesting perspective.

Dear Friends and Students

Michael Pollan is an American author, journalist, activist, and professor of journalism at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, says “Came from a plant, eat it; was made in a plant, don’t.”

Across the world, people recognized the importance of eating organic. Not only does organic food help reduce public health risk, there is strong evidence that food grown organically are rich in nutrients, like Vitamin C, Iron, Magnesium, and Phosphorus, with less exposure to Nitrates and Pesticide residues. NGOs, Green Activists and Health conscious people are trying their level best to promote this culture.

Till here the story is nice! Seeing response from people, Few Governments are making genuine efforts to promote organic culture in their respective states/countries. One such country is Sri Lanka! Government is pushing towards organic farming and making stringent measures in this direction! They made an agriculture policy and decision to ban the use and import of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides and weedicides in pursuit of a “100 per cent organic food producer”!

You know what happened? Economy got impacted heavily. Food production got drastically down. As per the article, the average yield from paddy can drop by 25% if chemical fertilizers are fully replaced by organic fertilizers. In contrast, applying organic fertilizer with the recommended dosages of chemical fertilizers would improve the profitability of farming by 16%. The tea export loss is estimated to 35%, amounting to Rs. 84 billion! Coconut yields by 30%, tuning of Rs. 18 billion. “A reduction in average agricultural productivity by 20% could cause a decrease in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 3.05 %” in Sri Lankan context!

Thanks to Pandemic, being a tourism dependent Nation, it has impacted economy severely. Finally, Sri Lanka’s government declared an economic emergency amid rising food prices, a depreciating currency, and depleting forex reserves.

Now this situation is posing serious threat to other developing Nations. All of us know organic food is healthy. However, if this kind of situation arises, food security becomes the issue. Again Governments may allow chemicals before it boomerangs.

What is the solution? We need to find localized solutions. A uniform policy may not help. If a farmer is having 100 acres, may be 20% of it can be experimented on organic way. This kind of practice improves the yield, balances the trade deficiency and sustain the economy.

Sometimes thinking healthy is unhealthy. We are in that World. Sad but unavoidable. World is caught in the vicious circle. No option but move on!

Do we have better solution for this crisis? Time Will Teach Us!

Your Well-wisher

Ravi Saripalle

Join Inspire to Innovate Storytelling Movement (i2itm.blogspot.com)

Source Inspiration: https://theprint.in/world/how-sri-lankas-overnight-flip-to-total-organic-farming-has-led-to-an-economic-disaster/728414/?fbclid=IwAR3eDdi4PbVro-PxiXL5VkXM6-4K4oKLLPWCW7X4KB1PsCeHdjQenr2ktKw