Food Insecurity and Revolution

It’s already happened in Sri Lanka.

Photo by Asantha Abeysooriya on Unsplash

In May, 2021, Sri Lanka’s president announced that his country would no longer use chemical fertilizers. Under President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s watch, the country had decided to work with the United Nations and the World Bank to focus on a green economy.

Among other changes, the president forced Sri Lanka’s farmers to go 100% organic.

The rice and tea harvests were decimated. These are critical crops. Now a third of the country’s farmland lies fallow.

The failure of Sri Lanka’s new agricultural policy is one of the main causes of the starvation that is now affecting the country. Without fertilizer, farmers could not grow enough food, either to feed its own population or to export to get cash to buy fuel.

This is not the only reason Sri Lanka is having problems. The pandemic cut off the supply of tourists, which removed a source of foreign exchange. The ban on fertilizer, however, made it impossible for the country to feed itself since it dramatically reduced crop yields. Now food, fuel, gas, medicine, and other essentials are scarce and the government has no foreign reserves to pay for imports.

This article in the Khaleej Times tells the story of a housewife with three children who approached the reporter’s…