President Gotabaya Rajapaksa imposed in 2021, overnight, a total ban on chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Without preparation, the reform was a fiasco.
Yanaka Lal Weerasinghe has both feet in the mud, a bag of rice under his arm. Since daybreak, it has been scattering these precious grains in its waterlogged plots. The second rice seed season started in mid-April in Sri Lanka. The two previous harvests have left a bitter taste for this 61-year-old farmer who lives in Mihintale, near Anuradhapura, in the north of the island. Yields have been low. The man is poor and he is not sure that the sacred temple, revered by the Buddhists and which dominates the hill, gives him any support.
Like all peasants on the Indian Ocean island, Yanaka woke up one morning feeling like the sky had fallen on his head. It was April 27, 2021, the President of the Republic, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, accused of having precipitated the bankruptcy of the country, had just announced that he was banning all imports of chemical fertilizers and pesticides and ordering the use of local biofertilizers to make the island nation the first country in the world to practice exclusively organic agriculture.
