{"id":44226,"date":"2015-05-28T12:28:34","date_gmt":"2015-05-28T18:28:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=44226"},"modified":"2015-05-27T13:45:17","modified_gmt":"2015-05-27T20:45:17","slug":"banning-gyphosate-a-time-bomb-to-sky-rocket-the-price-of-produce-for-the-coming-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/05\/28\/banning-gyphosate-a-time-bomb-to-sky-rocket-the-price-of-produce-for-the-coming-elections\/","title":{"rendered":"Banning Gyphosate \u2013 A Time Bomb\u00a0 to sky-rocket the price of produce for the coming elections?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chandre Dharmawardana, Ottawa, Canada<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

The president has naively banned the well-known herbicide (Glyphosate) pivotal to the productivity and\u00a0 survival\u00a0 of Sri Lanka’s agricultural sector. He has been led\u00a0 to believe that the ban would stop the epidemic of kidney disease in the Rajarata.\u00a0 The resultant sky-rocketing of the price of food items and the disarray in the plantation sector\u00a0 will hit the Sirisena government just in time for the next elections.<\/p>\n

A small group of individuals associated with a lady who claims psychic powers, and a number of Kelaniya University Dons\u00a0 seem to have usurped the powers bestowed upon the President’s\u00a0 Pesticide Advisory Committee (PAC).\u00a0 The Kelaniya group has\u00a0 exploited the hysteria and public incomprehension\u00a0 caused by a recent WHO reclassification of Gyphosate as a probable carcinogen under heavy exposure, classifying it with many common detergents and disinfectants.\u00a0 The word probable\u201d has been applied in regard to Glyphosate, while definite carcinogenicity has been attributed to Cloves and Citronella oil at even lower exposure.<\/p>\n

No evidence for\u00a0 causing Kidney disease by Glyphosate has been recognized by any recognized scientific organization.<\/p>\n

The WHO report led to a flurry of activity all over the world where the governments requested their expert advisers\u00a0 to recommend what should be done. In every country the advisory boards recommended that the WHO reclassification is a technical correction that does not affect accepted practice, and that no changes are necessary.\u00a0 Prof. Jean McLaughlin, one of the authors of the WHO-report adverse to Glyphosate expressly stated\u00a0 concurrence with this in a public TV discussion.<\/p>\n

However, in Sri Lanka, the expert committee does not seem to have been consulted. The committee comprises 15 members selected\u00a0 from relevant institutions like the Department of Agriculture, Ministry of Health, Govt. Analyst\u2019s Department, Research Institutes for Tea, Rubber and Coconut, The Standards Institute, Environmental Ministry, Commissioner of Labour and\u00a0 nominees of the Ministry of Agriculture. According to press reports, the Kelaniya group had met with the President and got the ban clinched (http:\/\/www.island.lk\/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=125352<\/a> ).<\/p>\n

The\u00a0 Kelaniya\u00a0 Group and their JHU friends have been agitating to ban the import of fertilizers and pesticides, claiming that they are toxic, contain Arsenic,\u00a0 and have unleashed an epidemic of Kidney disease in the North-Central Province. This view is not held by other experts or members of the PAC. The previous government was also pressurized by the Kelaniya\u00a0 group, but after hesitation, the Rajapaksa government introduced a limited ban in just the CKDU-affected\u00a0 regions, during the heat of the election campaign in Dec 2014. The PAC as well as those who understand the plantation sector had prevailed on the\u00a0 government that the Tea, Rubber, Coconut as well as paddy and vegetables production would simply disappear if this herbicide, and the inorganic fertilizers were banned. There is simply no supply of organic fertilizers\u201d or\u00a0 manual\u00a0 labour for hand weeding that can meet the requirements.<\/p>\n

As most scientists have argued, there is an imparative need for reducing the amounts of agro-chemicals used. Modern ideas about creating a healthy soil goes well beyond just applying fertilizers and pesticides to the crops. The soil itself is a complex ecology that must be be nourished using the latest ideas on symbiosis of organisms, nitrogen fixation and soil hydrology. Composting to make organic manure\u201d at the scale needed is just not possible as compost pits are notorious for releasing methane, carbon dioxide and other green house gases. Traditional varieties of seeds demand a lot of water, take longer to mature, and it is pie in the sky to believe that we can proceed towards a more enlightened form of agricultural practice by simply banning the existing practices by decree. And that too, for the wrong reason of fighting CKDU.<\/p>\n

What should be done to stop the kidney disease in the Rajarata?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The key to stopping this disease is the provision of clean drinking water to the Residents of the Affected Areas (RAA). Our research has suggested that the accumulation of salts in the drinking-water wells used by the RAA\u00a0 is a very likely cause of kidney disease, where the ionicity of the water acts to cause slow deterioration of the kidney layers. Of course, any discussion of causes assumes that the subjects are otherwise comparable with respect to life styles, diet etc.\u00a0 In fact, residents who drink water from natural springs or municipal water in Anuradhapura, and having similar health problems, diets\u00a0 and life styles do not contract Kidney disease. Hence most other proposed causes, multi-factorial or otherwise,\u00a0 cannot be sustained, and the available analytical data also eliminate almost all of these\u00a0 proposed causes.<\/p>\n

Prof. Sunil Jayalath has recently written to the Island newspaper\u00a0 (Island, May 26th, 2015) claiming that delivering water using Reverse Osmosis (RO) plants is the way to go, while criticizing the use of rainwater. He proposes taking water from rivers and irrigation canals to\u00a0 remove\u00a0 the pollutants. The clean\u201d part of the water\u00a0 is sold as drinking water, while the polluted part is put back into the river. In our view, and based on available analytical-chemistry data, most of the steam water and irrigation canal water are not polluted and suitable for drinking without RO if filtered and boiled. There are perhaps short unsuitable periods\u00a0 of the year when the run-off from agricultural lands\u00a0 increases the level of phosphates, fluorides\u00a0 etc., in the water.<\/p>\n

It is the sustained use of water from ground wells which is,\u00a0 in our view\u00a0 responsible for CKDU. The well water\u00a0 in many affected areas is high in electrical conductivity. This arises from dissolved salts.<\/p>\n

Prof. Jayalath’s arguments would be more persuasive if he would give typical chemical-analysis data for the levels of pollutants found in the water that his RO units are taking in, and putting out. He has so far presented none. Furthermore, Rajarata people have a tradition of using rain water wisely, and such water is eminently drinkable if filtered and boiled, because most of the uncleanness\u201d in rain water is likely to be bacterial. The main short coming of rain water is its low hardness, and this can be corrected easily and cheaply.\u00a0 Furthermore, rain water can be collected\u00a0 in large plastic or galvanized tanks,\u00a0 or in earthenware or\u00a0 masonry tanks, and these are not expensive!<\/p>\n

What has all this and Kidney disease got to do with Glyphosate? In fact, nothing at all. Is it possible that the Kelaniya Group which includes Dr. Nalin de Silva, no friend of the Sirisena government, has hatched an excellent political trap for the Yahapalanaya\u201d by leading Sirisena into a huge boruwala\u201d (pit-fall)? Poetic justice will be served when the price of rice, coconuts\u00a0 and vegetables rises steeply, while the Tea and Rubber markets grind to a halt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chandre Dharmawardana, Ottawa, Canada The president has naively banned the well-known herbicide (Glyphosate) pivotal to the productivity and\u00a0 survival\u00a0 of Sri Lanka’s agricultural sector. He has been led\u00a0 to believe that the ban would stop the epidemic of kidney disease in the Rajarata.\u00a0 The resultant sky-rocketing of the price of food items and the disarray […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[85],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chandre-dharmawardana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44226\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}