Commentary
Synthetic, or “chemical,” nitrogen fertilizers are bad for the environment, but “organic” fertilizers are good… Right?
Well, not exactly.
Oversimplified thinking like this has more to do with environmental ideology than environmental science, and can have disastrous effects when implemented as policy.
Sri Lanka: A Cautionary Fail
Nowhere has this been more poignant in recent times than in Sri Lanka, where green idealism and a priori assumptions led to catastrophic crop failure last year. The country is still struggling to overcome the resulting economic crisis.
Police use water canon to disperse farmers taking part in an anti-government protest demanding the resignation of Sri Lanka’s President Gotabaya Rajapaksa over the country’s economic crisis in Colombo on July 6, 2022. (-/AFP via Getty Images)
In April of 2021, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa led his country on a path that would transform it from a thriving food exporter to an importer of rice and other crops, in need of emergency economic assistance. The Sri Lankan government banned the use and importation of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, in a naive “great experiment” in green policy-making and self-reliance. (You can read more about the Sri Lanka farming crisis here.)…