{"id":85088,"date":"2019-01-23T13:40:04","date_gmt":"2019-01-23T20:40:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=85088"},"modified":"2019-01-23T15:07:00","modified_gmt":"2019-01-23T22:07:00","slug":"the-senaa-caterpillar-invades-the-toxin-free-nation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/01\/23\/the-senaa-caterpillar-invades-the-toxin-free-nation\/","title":{"rendered":"The \u201cSenaa\u201d Caterpillar invades the \u201cToxin-Free\u201d nation!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Sri Lanka has now woken up to the fact that the armyworm caterpillar, known locally as the Senaa caterpillar, has arrived in Sri Lanka and begun its march of devastation. This is what is known as a Grey Rhino\u201d event \u2013 that is, an event whose coming\u00a0 is\u00a0 obvious but totally ignored because the attention is directed elsewhere. The armyworm arrived in Africa\u00a0 by 2015-16\u00a0 and\u00a0 landed in India in 2016-17. It was obvious that\u00a0 other neighbouring countries will follow suite.<\/p>\n

However, in Sri Lanka scientific agriculture had been hijacked out of the agricultural and environmental scientists, and taken into the hands of\u00a0 NGOs\u00a0 and political ideologues.\u00a0 They usually begin their Manthra<\/em> by quoting what Rachel Carson wrote in the early 1970s in regard to the\u00a0 consequences of the overuse of DDT in USA. They push for traditional agriculture\u201d without any pesticides or even fertilizers.\u00a0 They want traditional\u201d gourmet seeds that yield only one tonne per hectare in six months, instead of the\u00a0 hybrid seeds\u00a0 popular with the common farmer that yield 5 tons per hectare in\u00a0 four months!<\/p>\n

Cutting out pesticides\u00a0 is as naive as claiming that the nation does not need an army or police because we have universal Compassion\u201d to all being and this should protect us from all evil. In reality, such extremes do not work, and the practicable alternative is the middle path\u201d. Instead, an extreme position was thrust on the Sri Lankan Government. It adopted a toxin-Free Nation\u201d policy and banned the well-known herbicide, glyphoste in 2015. Even a few parts of it per billion parts of water (or soil) was claimed to cause chronic kidney disease \u2013 a claim with no scientific support. Today we know, thanks to the work of scientists in Peradeniya and the Kidney specialists of the Kandy Hospital, that the disease is cause by consuming hard (kivul<\/em>\u201d) well water contaminated by fluoride of geological origin.<\/p>\n

Once such a climate of opinion is created by powerful political monks and organs of the Presidential secretariat like the SEMA (“Strategic Enterprise Management Agency”) no agricultural scientists can have the courage\u00a0 to ask for stocking up\u00a0 the necessary pesticides and propose a program of anticipatory pest control. The political\u00a0 thrust\u00a0 is to get rid of all toxins (agrochemicals)\u00a0 and use traditional solutions. Those invoke Kema\u201d, Manthra\u201d, traditional herbs like Madurutalaa<\/em>\u201d, plants like\u00a0 Kohomba (Azadirachta indica)<\/em> , and using\u00a0\u00a0 biodynamic and telluric forces\u201d to fight pests. Rudof Steiner, the father of Western-style\u00a0 organic Farming\u201d was a great believer in telluric forces\u201d. Our\u00a0 Colombo elites have uncritically lapped it all up and become warriors of the local\u00a0 Green movement\u201d.<\/p>\n

The attitude that prevails today, and the attempt to link all this with a moral imperative is seen in the propaganda put out by the SEMA project where toxin-free farming is attached to morality (the project has now been abandoned, after much damage).\u00a0 One may find in the social media\u00a0 (e.g.,facebook), a short film by Nalaka Wijerathne, and other similar clips. It may or may not be connected with SEMA, but it displays the level of public mis-information and naivety that drives the vasha-visha nathi ratak (toxin-free nation)\u201d type of campaigns.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/1580534728845852\/videos\/504838610005991\/UzpfSTEwMDAwNDU3NjkyMDE5MDpWSzo1NjUyMDA1NTA2MjQwNDI\/<\/a><\/p>\n

An elderly\u00a0 farmer is shown to go to a stream, where he encounters a little boy fishing. He condemns the boy as a sinner\u201d,\u00a0 and washes out a 5-litre container that may be used for spraying pesticides.\u00a0 The farmer returns to his home. A short while later the boy passes by the farmer’s house and gives him some fish. The farmer asks, do you want some money for the fish\u201d? The boy says, No, it was you who killed them\u201d.<\/p>\n

The implications and messages conveyed here are multiple.\u00a0 (i) Farmers are uneducated and do not know how to handle agrochemicals. (ii) The small amount of agrochemical residues that were in the container when added to the\u00a0 river water were enough to kill the fish. (iii) So, if the fish are killed, you too will get sick by using this stuff in growing food.\u00a0 All three items are actually grossly incorrect. Another subtle put down is the suggestion that farmers, having to\u00a0 kill pests (be they Kapra Beetles or Army worms) are adharmishta<\/em>\u201d sinners.<\/p>\n

Farmers have a fair understanding of agrochemicals, but they may misuse them, just as people misuse\u00a0 medication\u00a0 The release of agrochemicals should be done as with\u00a0 pharmacy products, with an agricultural technician\u00a0 writing the prescription\u201d for each farm. Farmers do not wash their pesticide containers\u00a0 in streams. Even if they did, a small amount of\u00a0 glyphosate\u00a0 in the tank (say 10 millilitres), when added to the river, gets diluted extensively, and also rapidly react with the green plants and algae and get\u00a0 destroyed. To claim that fish would be killed within a short time, as depicted by the film is complete nonsense. Claims of increased deformed births, mutations etc., in the NCP made by Ven. Ratana in a TV interview (AdaDerana, April 2018)\u00a0 are totally unsubstantiated and agree with the level of\u00a0 mutations expected from cosmic and other radiation falling naturally on the earth.\u00a0 A truly large chemical spill\u00a0 is needed for killing the fish. However, small amounts added regularly over a long time need\u00a0 to be tightly controlled, and this is why\u00a0 the sale of agrochemicals should be monitored just as with pharmaceuticals. The precautionary principle consists in control and constraint, and not in banning and banishing.<\/p>\n

Similarly, a recent press scare claimed that\u00a0\u00a0 common herbs like Gotukola\u201d, Mukunuwenna\u201d are laced with traces of insecticides and are too dangerous to eat. This\u00a0 was\u00a0 entirely unfounded as the writer confused maximum allowed\u00a0 levels for good farming practice\u00a0 with thresholds for health risks (see:<\/p>\n

Toxic cocktail of myth and truth<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.dailynews.lk\/2018\/11\/07\/features\/167704\/toxic-cocktail-myth-and-truth<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Toxic cocktail of myth and truth<\/h2>\n

According to a news report, a scientific meeting of the Department of Agriculture (DOA) was held in Peradeniya o…<\/td>\n

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.\u00a0 The amounts found are so small that you have to eat several kilograms of the herbs everyday, perhaps for a decade, for any type of chronic illness to set in.<\/p>\n

Today, even DDT has been re-approved by the WHO (since 2006, after much research) for domestic use.\u00a0 Far more advanced knowledge of pesticides, sustainable agriculture, and biotechnology\u00a0 at the molecular level are in our hands. Minimal but optimal\u00a0 use of fertilizers and herbicides by using crop rotation, no-tillage farming to cut down erosion,\u00a0 and soil analysis to control agrochemical inputs etc ., are routine.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Instead, in Sri Lanka we have wealthy\u00a0 Colombo-based groups who push for traditional agriculture devoid of any pesticides and even discourage the use of fertilizers. Their justification is multi-pronged:\u00a0 heroic opposition to multinationals\u201d,\u00a0 unfounded fear of toxins in the food , and grand claims of\u00a0 Sri Lanka being the\u00a0 granary of the East\u201d when it used\u00a0 traditional agriculture. So,\u00a0 we should revert back to traditional agriculture!.\u00a0 They\u00a0 are simple solution to a complex problem, like the five lessons of the JVP of the 1970s.<\/p>\n

According to the Bible, Egypt was the granary of the world (Genesis 41), and\u00a0 most ancient nations have such claims. Mesopotamia was claimed to be the granary of the world known to the Romans.\u00a0 Sanskrit texts claim that Saptha Sindhu<\/em> (today’s Panjab) was the granary of\u00a0 Jambu Dveepa<\/em>.\u00a0 According to our Chronicles, Lanka exported rice on a number of occasions. But the Chronicles themselves,\u00a0 and the records of rings in old tree trunks reveal a series of famines, pestilences\u00a0 etc., that ravaged S-E Asia regularly. However,\u00a0 most people have only heard of the Baeminitiyaa\u00a0 Saaya\u201d, a historic famine so severe that even the upper classes and monks had no food, and began to perish. Hence the surviving monks decided to write down the Buddha’s word, held by oral tradition up till then, on ola leaves at the Alu Vihara<\/em> temple (1st Century BCE)..<\/p>\n

Prof. Siriweera of the Rajarata University has researched and written about the precarious nature of food availability in Sri Lanka in medieval and ancient times. Even if traditional agriculture\u00a0 sustained a small population (less than that of Colombo today), it\u00a0 cannot even marginally meet\u00a0 today’s\u00a0 needs. The world’s output of organic\u201d agriculture remains below 2% and increasing it even by 10-fold is a challenge and creates a two-tier food system.
\n(https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/moving-from-conventional-farming-to-organic-farming-jumping-from-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire<\/a>)<\/p>\n

We should remember that in recent times, the Soviet Union and also China tried out ideologically driven Marxist\u201d agriculture, and produced record famines and much human suffering. China exported rice to Sri Lanka in the middle of a famine in China, hoping to be noted when China was just an international underdog. So, the occasional export of grain does not make a country a granary of the region even for that period!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chandre Dharmawardana, Canada Sri Lanka has now woken up to the fact that the armyworm caterpillar, known locally as the Senaa caterpillar, has arrived in Sri Lanka and begun its march of devastation. This is what is known as a Grey Rhino\u201d event \u2013 that is, an event whose coming\u00a0 is\u00a0 obvious but totally ignored […]<\/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-85088","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\/85088","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=85088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85088\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}