There was something about them not even lining up supply of organic fertilizers that met their new standards, so it does seem like the implementation was super-hasty.
I think I'm probably having generically modified crops planted.
Our local school system does this thing, where every year they feel the need to massively overhaul things and implement it in a rush. It's like they think each time that this will be the the magic bullet to cure poverty, and if they only find the right new curriculum, or new bell schedule, or whatever, then all of a sudden test scores will skyrocket. It makes for very low teacher morale, but maybe that will be the magic bullet.
A little off topic; I had meant to tie that back to Sri Lanka. I guess I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
Michael Specter, an adjunct professor of bioengineering at Stanford, wrote this, and it got past the famous New Yorker fact checkers:
Synthetic insulin, the first genetically modified product, is consumed each day by millions of diabetics. To make the drug, scientists insert human proteins into a common bacteria, which is then grown in giant industrial vats.
This is wrong, it's very obviously wrong, it's wrong in a way that a fourteen-year-old would be able to tell was wrong if she'd been paying attention in biology class, and yet there it is. It should leap out at anyone with even basic knowledge of biology, like someone talking about "New York, the Canadian capital" or "John Wayne, the famous sculptor".
3: That is one of my least favorite things about the education debate. So much of it basically "This failed because we spent $150.52 per student and didn't overcome structural poverty."
It's very uncommon once you put the human proteins in it. Self-replicating proteins would be quite something!
All I remember is that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.
Given what's happening in Ukraine, this is probably not a good time for a poor country to try the fuck around and find out method of agricultural reform.
Oof.
Given these two paras:
Agricultural chemicals such as fertiliser were among the imports banned last year as authorities tried to save dwindling foreign currency reserves. The restrictions were lifted months later after farmer protests and crop failures.[...]
Despite the end of the chemical ban, importers say they have been unable to replenish stocks because commercial banks lack foreign exchange to pay for new supplies.
I feel like the organic-ization may not be responsible for the whole disaster, although it will sure be suspect. Justly suspect; I don't think anyone respectable thinks you can change to organic farming *quickly*.
And misdiagnosing is bad just for the practical problem of making Sri Lanka less poor, if their international currency is flowing out to (effectively) import food. And yet Sri Lanka should have a really high potential NPP! I am rummaging around for a stoichiometric balance on what they need to import and why. Both nitrogen and potassium? Shouldn't they start with N-fixing which can be cheap if you have a few years? Pffff.
Since bananas are an excellent source of potassium, maybe to grow bananas you need more potassium?
Takes bananas to make bananas.
2014 wasn't a great year for Ukraine either.
Current manure shortages/rearrangements in the US
That's just from the concentration of cows and pigs, though. Only a few states are already dealing with the concentrations of humans (Washington sends concentrated, checked biosolids back over the mountains from the conurbation to the big farms.) (Also we can now compost dead people, but that's a *different program*.)
If you live nearby, you can poop in the fields directly.
Though it really works better if you only poop in the late winter or early spring.
low fiber diet the rest of the year, save it up
Wikipedia on Sri Lankan agriculture is interesting, suggests the article is probably from 2021, not 2014? The foreign exchange problem is older than that though.
(Also we can now compost dead people, but that's a *different program*.)
Worst reality TV program ever.
Oh, huh, the second link is from 2014. This is what I get for not reading only the comments.
11: I'm not an agronomist but Sri Lanka does or rather did a lot of exporting of cash crops like tea, so trying to save foreign exchange by banning the import of the fertiliser you need to grow the crops that earn you most of your foreign exchange doesn't seem like a very good idea.
It seems that the problem wasn't entirely due to Shiva and the loons, but an unfortunate concatenation of circumstances including the pandemic (and ISIS terrorists) hitting their tourism industry, and the government borrowing huge amounts at high interest rates to cut taxes and build huge pointless bits of infrastructure.
The fertiliser ban comes quite late in this process - it was only introduced last spring. Really the crisis started being recognised as a crisis back in 2019. So the loons didn't cause it - though they've helped make it worse. (Also making things worse: one of its largest tea markets was Russia, which has now decided to have a crack at genocide and therefore isn't buying nearly as much tea.)
24. The local grocer that carried my favorite tea (from Sri Lanka) has retired. The tea is available in bulk, 15lbs. Are there two people in the US interested in going in on bulk tea? 5lbs for $50.
Black tea with bergamot, the blend that Earl Grey knocked off.
This one: https://www.amazon.com/Nazu-Persian-Special-450-grams/dp/B071DYQ6TF?th=1
My take on this is that stupid people are smart to be conservative. It's easy to mess things up when you try to change things. Even if you're smart they're going to be problems.
My take on this is that stupid people are smart to be conservative. It's easy to mess things up when you try to change things. Even if you're smart they're going to be problems.
My take on this is that stupid people are smart to be conservative. It's easy to mess things up when you try to change things. Even if you're smart they're going to be problems.
This piece is from India, last autumn, a few months after the fertiliser ban: https://theprint.in/opinion/rajapaksas-experiment-with-organic-farming-in-sri-lanka-a-warning-to-developing-countries/731553/
It seems the ban covered both fertilisers and pesticides. The foreign exchange crisis existed before the ban, it says, but the president's advisors suggested a fertiliser ban as a response to it.
And it seems that they were drawing on reserves of local traditional wisdom in doing so:
One member of this task force, for example, had once claimed to have identified a self-generating rice variety of yore that had fed the ten giant warriors of the Sinhala King Dutugemunu of the Anuradhapura Kingdom between 205 BC to 161 BC.
That's a lot of tea, lw, but I am interested all the same. At three pounds I would definitely be interested.
The Napoleon Dynamite kid is running from ass blasters and looking for Burt Gummer.
Michael Gross is as convincing as a right-wing extremist/self-taught biologist as he was as a public tv executive in Ohio.
I guess it's shriekers until they molt into ass blasters. Biology is hard.
Given that this was filmed in 2019, it's pretty prophetic that Gummer talks about how they could spread like a viral pandemic.
If you show dynamite on a shelf in the second act, you have to set it off slightly later in the second act.
I just saw a more sequential rundown by a Grauniad Australia reporter on TikTok.
It seems they slashed taxes in 2019, then the pandemic hit, and while they may have at the time been self-sufficient in rice they rely on imports for a lot of essential goods. So in their economic crisis they had a lot less government revenue to and as described above, a huge shortage of foreign exchange. The jump in fuel prices due to Russia may have been the final straw leading to the current civil unrest.
It appears since my post, they briefly tried to block all social media, then rescinded this.
Finally, very dominated atm by a powerful family. The president is the brother of the prime minister, and one person quoted criticizing the social media ban was a minister who is the president's nephew. Presumably also the prime minister's nephew as they didn't say he was the prime minister's son.