When haste leads to failure

Thursday 23rd December, 2021

Failure is said to be an orphan. If the government’s organic fertiliser drive had become a success, many ruling party politicians and state officials would have been falling over themselves to claim paternity thereof, as it were. Having come a cropper to all intents and purposes, the project is now without a father.

Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture Prof. Udith K. Jayasinghe has blamed some unnamed advisors for making a botch of the government’s organic fertiliser programme. Inordinate haste on their part has led to the present crisis, he says. True, many ruling party backers have found themselves exalted and lucrative sinecures as advisors, at the expense of the public; they are notorious for bungling any task assigned to them. But it is hard to believe that the government allowed its organic fertiliser programme to be carried out according to the whims and fancies of its advisors.

There is no way government advisors can impose their will on their political masters, who consider themselves omniscient. Therefore, even if it is true that some advisors were responsible for the fertiliser mess-up, most of the blame for it should go to those who implemented the programme.

Minister of Agriculture Mahindananda Aluthgamage and his officials cannot absolve themselves of the blame for what has befallen the agricultural sector due to the government’s organic fertiliser project. The Minister is still defending it.

Who are the advisors who, the Agriculture Ministry Secretary says, are responsible for bungling the government’s green agriculture drive? They must be named forthwith and stern action taken against them for having derailed a vital government programme. They have not only inflicted irreparable damage on the agricultural sector but also made the government highly unpopular.

The Opposition has argued that the government banned agrochemicals to save foreign reserves, which are said to have hit an all-time low. If so, it has been a case of swings and roundabouts; the botched organic fertiliser experiment is sure to result in a drop in the national agricultural output, and a lot of foreign exchange will have to be spent on imports to meet the shortfall in the supply of agricultural goods; perhaps, the government move might even be penny-wise and pound-foolish in case of foreign exchange spent on imports to prevent shortages exceeding the savings from the agrochemical ban.

Meanwhile, it is unfortunate that the promotion of organic fertiliser has suffered a severe setback owing to bungling on the part of those who handled it. But it can still be put back on track, and steered to success if conducted systematically.

The overapplication of agrochemicals has been a huge problem in this country, and it took a turn for the worse, after the introduction of the fertiliser subsidy. Some agrochemicals were applied in excess of recommended quantities for decades, and this bad practice has led to many serious problems such as diseases and environmental damage. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was right in addressing this issue and undertaking to reduce the country’s dependence on agrochemicals, but extreme action should have been avoided.

The country’s switch-over to organic fertiliser should not have been done overnight; the experiment should have been conducted over a period of time with all stakeholders, especially agricultural experts being consulted and their views taken on board. If the government acts sensibly without trying to railroad the farming community into submission, treads cautiously and refrains from resorting to extreme action, the country will gain from the organic fertiliser programme at issue.