Organic agriculture could just be the absolute embodiment of political correctness. To say anything against it would be sacrilege. But more importantly, it’s a self-defeating endeavour. Even its most vocal critics who doubt organic agriculture’s ability to produce high yields without chemical enhancements to feed an ever-growing population find it difficult without giving themselves to the angelic virtues of natural farming.
“We always say organic farming is good. No argument about that,” says Prof. Buddhi Marambe of the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Peradeniya in a presentation at a seminar organized by the Sri Lanka Organization of Agriculture Professionals (SLOAP), a consortium of agricultural scientists and agronomists. “But remember, we also need to feed a nation.”
Last year, President Maithripala Sirisena launched one of the most pivotal agricultural policies in recent history: the toxin-free nation programme. The initiative had one audacious objective: To cleanse the nation from chemicals used in agriculture. The previous year, the country became one of the first to ban the popular weedicide glyphosate for its supposed association with the spread of chronic kidney disease in the North-Central province, the heartland of the country’s rice economy.
The spread of chronic kidney disease sparked a national conversation on more environment-friendly farming practices. The government leveraged this idea as a moral justification to revamp the agricultural policy and implement more stringent controls on agrochemicals.
“If you have a suspicion, you should first ban it,” says Asoka Abeygunawardana, chairman of the Strategic Enterprise Management Agency (SEMA), a government institution under direct presidential purview that spearheads the policy. “Then, do trials and prove that it’s not harmful.” The government’s approach towards toxins in agriculture underlies the idea of ‘precautionary principal’, which says that we should avoid any action that will cause severe harm to the public until safety is established through clear evidence.
[pullquote]Abeygunawardana is critical of the agriculture scientific community who warns that the toxin-free nation programme would lead to a national food crisis in the future[/pullquote]
While the approach is seemingly progressive and something to be rejoiced, some accuse the policy of toying with the future sustainability of the nation’s food security. Members of SLOAP have been critical of the toxin-free nation programme, citing it as a policy based on unscientific grounds led by political motivations. The sudden glyphosate
ban in particular was seen as a tipping point of the government’s willingness to compromise scientific rigor in favour of emotional fervor. “I do not care whether glyphosate is in or out, but my concern has always been the way it was banned,” says Prof. Marambe, who is also an expert in weed science.
This is not the first time weedicides have come under scrutiny. Paraquat, the most widely used agro-chemical before glyphosate, was extremely toxic towards humans and contributed towards a spurt of farmer suicides. The government set up a committee to investigate the issue and recommended to phase out the use of Parquat over the next three years. Prof. Marambe, who was a part of the committee that banned Parquat, believes a similar scheme should have been ideally adopted, providing farmers and the industry the time to adjust and seek alternatives, without jeopardizing the entire agriculture sector.
Whether the glyphosate ban was based on scientific grounds is debatable. Many scientific studies conducted to find a plausible explanation for chronic kidney disease indicated a causal link with human exposure to agrochemicals, among many other factors ranging from malnutrition to high prevalence of calcium and chloride in water, to alcohol and tobacco consumption. But, multiple studies and agencies have offered contradictory conclusions miring the debate in controversy. So much so that the debate has become a cherry picking fanfare to suit arguments that favour either party.
In April 2016, cracks in this initial hypothesis started to emerge. The presidential task force on kidney disease together with the World Health Organization held a three-day joint consultation to review scientific literature on disease and recommend preventive action. This was a landmark event in the effort to finding the origins of the disease. The consortium brought together 54 experts from around the globe, from clinicians to epidemiologists, toxicologists, agricultural scientists, nephrology experts and hydrologists. The alleged effect of agrochemicals as a probable cause for the disease was at the top of the list to discuss. However, in the recommendation, the notion that agrochemicals played a major role in the spread of the kidney disease was dispelled.
It has been long argued that agrochemical residue in the form of heavy metal chemicals like cadmium and arsenic have contaminated waterways, resulting in entering human biological systems. But, the committee determined that the strength of the evidence in such a case was inconclusive – meaning the available studies were not conclusive enough to establish a causative link. The committee even regarded these areas as not being a research priority for further investigation. For glyphosate, the committee acknowledged it as a toxic substance for human kidneys, but determined the strength of evidence once again as inconclusive to establish a causative link with the disease.
Just last month, a major investigation revealed that the WHO’s international cancer research agency (ICRA), which declared glyphosate a chemical that probably causes cancer in people, has omitted a significant research study that showed the chemical has no links with cancer. The withheld study included was statistically well-powered with a sample of 89,000 agricultural workers and families in the United States since the early 1990s. More importantly, it was also one of the handful of studies that examined real-life human exposure to glyphosate, whereas much of the scientific research ICRA analysed involved laboratory rodents.
Abeygunawardana’s argument for the glyphosate ban is an illustration of the catchphrase ‘better safe than sorry’, which at first instance seems to have merit. After all, it’s tempting not to vie for a public policy based on a principal that champions public safety as its first priority. But, the rhetorical appeal of it is misleading and dangerous. For instance, pesticides that are often used as a cause to exercise a precautionary principal, an a ban on a toxic chemical, can lead to substitutes and alternative practices that can create a much more harmful impact on the environment and society’s well-being. Even in the advent of the glyphosate ban, there is nothing to say that the number of kidney patients in the future will diminish or that the overall health of the nation will improve. The precautionary model creates precedence for offering simplistic solutions in the face of complex issues to maintain an elusive status quo. This creates a state of paralysis for scientific advancement in contentious areas with the environment like agriculture and energy.
Today, SEMA plays a crucial role in dictating the agricultural policy in the country. The agency was initially established to provide consultative services, and to improve efficiency in government institutions and key sectors of the economy. “When the president requested the agricultural ministry to formulate a plan to get rid of chemicals in the agriculture sector, the ministry said they cannot do that,” says Abeygunawardana. “When they say they are incapable of doing it, the president gives us the mandate to see whether this can be done or not.”
Abeygunawardana is critical of the agriculture scientific community who warns that the toxin-free nation programme would lead to a national food crisis in the future. “How can they say that natural farming cannot compete with chemicals without doing pilot studies,” he says. “They have to prove this is a failure. Until then, they are not experts.”
[pullquote]A ban on a toxic chemical can lead to substitutes and alternative practices that can create a much more harmful impact on the environment and society’s wellbeing[/pullquote]
The collusion of science and politics never ends well. Lysenkoism, a political movement that rejected genetics and science-based agriculture in the Stalinist era in Russia, provides an apt cautionary tale. Trofim Lysenko, a one-time horticulture hobbyist, the ideologue behind the initiative, spearheaded the movement based on his pseudo-scientific ideas. Chief among it was his deviation from Mendelian genetics at a time when the rest of the world adopted precise and careful manipulation of the genome to produce higher-yielding, and disease- and pest-resistant varieties. Lysenko’s criticism on heredity and his peasant background fit the Marxist ideology, and thus engulfed the state to the extent of making him the director of the institute of genetics at the nation’s highest scientific research institution. More than pushing the nation towards a famine, it was an era marked with the repression of scientists who dared to oppose Lysenko’s pseudoscientific doctrines.
Many are equating the toxin-free nation campaign as an eerie illustration of Lysenkoism. The harsh rhetoric has frustrated and alienated the local scientific community from policy making in the agriculture sector. Scientists who voice concerns against the toxin-free nation programme are in the precipice of being branded as agents of agro-chemical companies. Any scientific study that shows opposing findings not in line with the government policy is concluded as a product of collusion with agrochemical companies. While there are strong allegations against giant agro-chem giants like Monsanto for meddling with scientific studies, the campaign rhetoric ostracizes the scientific community and further halts the advancement of agriculture in the country.