Sri Lanka is in deep economic crisis. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe have announced their resignation. The presidential residence was occupied by protesters last Saturday, and the president himself is expected to go into exile . Part of the crisis is a hastily launched national experiment in organic farming . Rajapaksa’s government last April banned the import of fertilizers and pesticides because of a lack of funds to buy fertilizers, ordering the country’s 2 million farmers to switch to organic farming. Despite claims that organic farming can produce comparable yields to conventional farming, domestic rice production has fallen by 20 percent in just six months. Sri Lanka, which was supposed to be self-sufficient in rice, is now forced to import $450 million of rice, and the price of rice has soared by 50 percent. Tea, the main export and source of foreign exchange, also suffers. The government lifted a ban on fertilizers on exports such as tea in November last year as tea production fell. The government eventually scrapped its policy on crops such as tea entirely, due to peasant protests, inflation and a collapsing currency. The government has offered farmers hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation, but cannot cover the damage caused by the ban. The decline in tea production alone is estimated to have caused an economic loss of $425 million.
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