Reposted from NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t Joe Public
But extra grossly dishonest reporting by the BBC:
Leaves from the luxurious inexperienced tea estates protecting the hills of central Sri Lanka find yourself in cups internationally.
Tea is the island’s largest export, usually bringing in additional than $1bn a yr, however the business is being arduous hit by the unprecedented financial disaster.
Most of Sri Lanka’s tea is grown by smaller farmers, like Rohan Tilak Gurusinghe, who owns two acres of land near the village of Kadugunnawa.
However he’s nonetheless reeling from the influence of a sudden, poorly thought-out authorities determination to ban chemical fertiliser final yr.
“I’m dropping cash,” he tells the BBC despondently. “With out fertiliser or gas, I can’t even take into consideration the way forward for my enterprise.”
The ban, ordered to attempt to defend the nation’s dwindling overseas reserves, was certainly one of plenty of disastrous coverage choices carried out by the now-ousted President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, with agricultural output falling considerably.
It was later reversed, however fertiliser has shot up in value and remains to be troublesome to supply, whereas the federal government is now unable to afford to import enough provides of petrol and diesel.
For farmers like Mr Gurusinghe, reliant on vehicles transporting tea leaves from his fields to factories for processing, it means delays which may result in the leaves drying out and lowering in high quality.
“Our leaders should not bothered about offering us with the fundamental requirements,” he tells the BBC.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/information/world-asia-62221355
The ban had nothing in any respect to “defending overseas reserves”. Neither is tea business being hit by the “.financial disaster”
The ban was a deliberate coverage determination by the President, as a part of his local weather change agenda. This was what he needed to say at COP26:
Nitrogen is an considerable ingredient that’s important to the sustenance of all dwelling issues.
Nevertheless, reactive nitrogen generated by human exercise and launched into ecosystems worsens local weather change.
Overuse of nitrogen, particularly in fertilisers, has opposed impacts on soil, water, air, and human well being.
For many years, persistent kidney illness has been a severe difficulty in Sri Lanka’s agricultural heartland.
The overuse of chemical fertilisers has contributed considerably to this downside.
It’s on this context that my Authorities took agency steps to scale back imports of chemical fertilizer, and strongly encourage natural agriculture.
The inevitable collapse of tea manufacturing, and thus exports, subsequently led to the collapse of Sri Lanka’s foreign money and the bankrupting of its economic system.
The BBC should share accountability for this catastrophe due to its continuous one-sided misreporting of local weather change.
