President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has taken the right decision by banning chemical fertiliser which we admire as a move that would save the lives of people and animals of this country, the Government Medical Officers’ Association (GMOA) President Dr. Anuruddha Padeniya said.
Addressing the media in Colombo yesterday he said that the same decision was made 17 years ago and again former Presidents Mahinda Rajapaksa and Maithripala Sirisena tried to implement it but it was not successful. When the first tractor was imported to Sri Lanka, late Prime Minister D.S.Senanayake saw the danger we are facing now and questioned where are the places in the tractor which produce cow dung. But today poisonous agro chemicals are being promoted using his photograph in the background.
According to Dr. Padeniya, the current percentage of those affected by kidney disease is around 20 percent and currently there are around 150,000 kidney patients are in Sri Lanka. A total of 5,000 kidney patients died last year (2020) and only around 450 died from Covid-19. Farmers ask for poison while we try our best to save their lives because of negative and inaccurate media publicity given to the issue showing it as a `shortage of fertiliser’.
Dr. Padeniya said that at present over 25,000 Sri Lankan farmers are involved in organic farming. They export organic food products and earn a good income. Currently Sri Lanka imports 90 percent of the country’s bee’s honey from Australia and New Zealand. But those countries have flowers only during two months of the year. Here in Sri Lanka flowers bloom during the whole year.
Eco friendly agriculture helps increases production by 40 percent to 300 percent which corrupt officials are aware of it.
This is why they oppose it. Agro chemicals are always associated with money and that is why they want to promote it for their own benefit. Only around 225 kilograms of compost is needed for an acre but they say 10,000 kgs are needed which is a miscalculation.