Toxin gonibillas cry wolf again, wanting agrochemical ban

Organic farming uses manual weeding and tilling of soil. It uses water to control weeds in paddy fields. All these greatly add to soil erosion, land and water use. They are out of the question if the world is to avert a climate catastrophe where the tropics would become un-inhabitable by 2050. Instead we need an agriculture with NO tilling, reduces land and water use. We need net-negative carbon. Organic agriculture or “traditional” methods, meso-american milpas, Israeli Fellah’s farms etc., cannot do this and feed an eight-billion world population.. Even a very gradual adoption of “organic” is not feasible.

By Chandre Dharmawardana,
chandre.dharma@yahoo.ca

Grave economic damage and political turmoil were triggered in Sri Lanka by fear mongering and indicting agrochemicals as dangerous toxins that should be banned. The bogeymen have shamelessly emerged from the woodwork again, even after the protests of farmers whose destiny has been compromised by Colombo Elites who demand to choose what they eat – organic food, bio-dynamic recipes, traditional but low-yielding rice varieties, etc., while the poor die of hunger and add their bodies to the compost heap of the toxin-free farmer.

Dr. Ranil Senanayake (RanilS) writes in the guise of replying Prof. Oliver Illeperuma (OilverI), and talks of “The fiction of healthy toxins” ( https://island.lk/the-fiction-of-healthy-toxins/) whereas Oliver I had titled his write up as “Lifting glyphosate ban – fact and fiction” (https://island.lk/lifting-glyphosate-ban-facts-and-fiction/). By changing the title, Dr. Senanayake ignores the issue of glyphosate entirely, sets up a false strawman and raises the specter of the toxin bogeyman (Gonibilla). RanilS engages in alarmist fear-mongering instead of replying Dr. Illeperuma’s focused discussion on the banning of Glyphosate.

The simple answer to RanilS is that Glyphosate is NOT a toxin when compared to the highly toxic copper sulphate pal-manikkam, mineral sulphur and many other dangerous toxins” that he and other advocates of organic farming believe in adding to soils under the labels of “organic farming”, “hela govithena”, “traditional agriculture, sustainable farming” and so forth.

Even 300 mg of Vitamin A is a toxin, but Vitamin A is utterly beneficial (and necessary) to good health at the recommended doses. Glyphosate is not toxic to humans or higher animals even at 500 times the recommended usage in agriculture, and does NOT bio-accumulate in plants or animal tissues as we rise up the web of life. Unlike DDT and other “fore-ever chemicals”, glyphosate does not accumulate in the ecosystem. Research shows that when glyphosate is added (accidentally or by design) to contaminated soils, such soils rejuvenate and the biomass of microorganisms, earthworms etc., INCREASES in number (see: Zhou et al, Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, volume 33, pages 2351–2357, year 2014).

Meanwhile, Dr. RanilS says “Bioaccumulation or bio-concentration in this sense does not refer to the human body as suggested by the ‘kidney’ comment; it refers to the agroecosystem! The concentration ratio means that if there is one part of toxin in the environment, it will be concentrated along the food chain at increasing levels. The concentration ratio of standard agrotoxins ranges from 1:3900 to over 1: 92,000.

Let us take copper sulphate that Dr. RanilS and other organic farmers believe in adding to their soils. If the copper is accumulated in plants, and if those plant debris is reused in composting, the bioaccumulation will be repeated at an even greater intensity in the compost. And yet that is exactly what Dr. RanilS wants farmers to use, when he switches off the fear-mongering to support “organic”.

Can Dr. RanilS name one plant that can accumulate glyphosate even at 1:1 let alone 1: 92,000 ratio?Composting, crucial to Organic farming releases methane and also carbon dioxide. Both are greenhouse gases (GHG) that accelerate runaway global warming. The effect is more serious than from the Harber-Bosch process (HBP) for the production of urea. HBP scavenges methane from oil fields and prevents its release as a GHG.So in practice HB is a net-green process. Furthermore, where a few kilos of mineral fertiliser suffice, the organic farmer has to deploy a tonne of compost to get the same harvests, and so generate a thousand times more GHG than in using modern agrochemicals.

Organic farming uses manual weeding and tilling of soil. It uses water to control weeds in paddy fields. All these greatly add to soil erosion, land and water use. They are out of the question if the world is to avert a climate catastrophe where the tropics would become un-inhabitable by 2050. Instead we need an agriculture with NO tilling, reduces land and water use. We need net-negative carbon. Organic agriculture or “traditional” methods, meso-american milpas, Israeli Fellah’s farms etc., cannot do this and feed an eight-billion world population.. Even a very gradual adoption of “organic” is not feasible.

Nostalgia-based farming models illustrated in the documentary movie (Biggest Little Farm, https://www.apricotlanefarms.com/biggest-little-farm/) mistakenly believe that everything can be accomplished using increased bio-diversity in farms. It may work if the world population were below 4 billion, and if humans consumed no meat or dairy products. So, what RanilS and others are advocating is nothing short of accelerating the climate catastrophe that is upon us. I have given a more detailed discussion in: https://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/beyond-the-green-revolution-how-humanity-needs-cutting-edge-technology-to-save-itself/

Not surprisingly, Dr. RanilS does not want questions on the ban of glyphosate. Venerable Ratana, who championed the glyphosate ban in the Yahapalanaya era cited RanilS as a “scientist who is with us”. In “Banning glyphosate: A political time bomb? 26-May-2015 Island I outlined the scientific error and the dangerous endgame of such a ban. That time bomb, re-launched by the Pohottuwa government exploded in the hands of Gotabhaya Rajapaksa when the farmers revolted.Dr. Buddhi Marmbe, a leading agricultural scientist had shown (see: Weed Science, volume 68(3), pages 246-252, year 2020) that the economic damage to the country from the glyphosate ban perpetrated by the Yahapalanaya government, instigated by Ratana Thera and his advisors, amounts to many times the damage done by the Bond scam. And yet, Ven. Ratana, Dr. RanilS as well as Dr. Anurudhdha Padeniya campaigned claiming that Sri Lankans have been poisoned since the 1970s with the use of fertilizers and pesticides. Dr. RanilS in fact produced an incorrect graph in 2016, claiming that the incidence of non-communicable diseases (e.g., diabetes, cancer, kidney disease, dementia, cardio-vascular diseases) has grown EXPONENTIALLY since 1970.

But his very graph established his grievous error, as it showed NO exponential behaviour, and NO evidence for the claimed toxicity, but merely displayed the expected linear increase associated with the increase life-expectancy resulting from the gross reduction in malnutrition produced by modern agriculture! A number of us pointed out in 2021 December the error in Dr. RanilS’s exponential-growth fallacy. Then he excused himself saying that the graph was drawn in haste. But now, in 2022 October he again writes in the Island,

“It is sad to witness the defence of the indefensible. If one looks at the statistics of rural health, it is clearly seen that the appearance of non-communicable diseases (NCD’s) in the rural sector began in the early 70s and has been rising exponentially since. If one looks for a significant correlation, it will be seen that it was around this time that the nation began its entry into the ‘green revolution’ or fossil energy and chemical supported agriculture. If the price for self-sufficiency in rice leads to a national health disaster should one not be promoting the popular slogan of toxin free agriculture?

So, Dr. RanilS is deliberately disseminating falsehoods, knowing that there is no exponential growth, given the admission at an e-mail symposium on biofilm fertilizers that we conducted in November-December 2021, which may be accessed at https://dh-web/green/BBF?index.html

However, quite unfazed by their own slips and fallacies, Dr. RanilS, Dr. Padeniya and their friends want the Sri Lankan farmer to adopt farming methods where the output is less than two metric tonnes per hectare, while modern farming methods easily yield 4-6 tones/ha, while more optimal good farming practices should yield up to 10-12 tonnes/ha, as in India or Egypt. It is these higher yields that have given the people an 80-year life expectancy, unlike prior to the 1960s.For those who seek more detailed analyses of the fear-mongering falsehoods of the RanilS-Ven. Ratana camp, I add the following internet links to useful documents.

The nonsense that Dr. Anuruddha Padeniya has broadcast, claiming that agrochemical toxins have made Sri Lankans sick, in following the ideologies of Dr. Ranil Senanayake et al has been rigorously shredded by the renowned environmentalist Dr. Rohan Pethiyagoda in a U-tube response in Sinhala that may be accessed at: https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21AJp%2DCX5bpWS4LUo&cid=B41356F321656C67&id=B41356F321656C67%2192406&parId=B41356F321656C67%2192398&o=OneUp. My shorter, English-language response may be found at https://dh-web.org/green/cdw-Padeniya18May2021E.pdf

Surprisingly, those who are taking a number of economists and politicians to the courts for causing economic damage to the country failed to include the rogue “agriculturalists”, rogue “doctors” and rogue “clairvoyants” who claimed direct knowledge from God Natha and misled the policy makers in a matter as crucial as food security.