24 April, 2024

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Organic Farming In Sri Lanka – Ideology Of Hitler & Sri Lankan Agri “Cults”

By Hiran B. Jayasundara

Consumers buy vegetables at rate of Rs. 100 where farmgate price or farmers cost and profit is around Rs. 25. This is almost 300 percent increase over farm prices when it reaches the market. As a result of this unattractive market profit margin, secondary income farmers are abandoning agriculture, with the result being a decline in national agricultural production over the decades and a situation where very fertile lands are not being used for agriculture. Final result would be Sri Lanka does not see the huge growth in the agricultural sector as seen in all other countries in Asia, where Agriculture sector GDP growth is almost stagnated.

Also, the post-harvest damage to vegetables and fruits in Sri Lanka alone is estimated at 30-40 percent annually, causing an estimated loss of 30 billion rupees to the national economy. That amount is about 50 percent of the annual cost of importing fertilizer to Sri Lanka. Also, Sri Lanka suffers an economic loss of Rs. 3.7 billion annually due to direct and indirect health risks associated with floods and droughts affecting the farming community in the face of climate change. Also, the economic loss due to climate change in coconut cultivation alone is estimated at Rs. 4.7 billion1. Real economic cost of the total agricultural sector due to climate hazards might be over Rs. 50 billion.The World Food and Health Organization has ranked Sri Lanka as the 4th country with the highest rate of deforestation, with a forest cover of 16.5 percent in 2019 and 29.7 percent in 2017. With the loss of wildlife habitat associated with deforestation, a wild elephant in Sri Lanka was killed every day in 20192 and every human life was lost by human-elephant conflict every three days. Due to wildlife problems, farmers in the upcountry areas of Sri Lanka have stopped their production. Economic loss of the nation due to this poor resource management systems would be billions of rupees although the value of losing human and biodiversity loss cannot be measured in simple economic terms.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, an estimated 5-7 million hectares of Sri Lanka’s agricultural land fall into the category of unproductive land annually due to land degradation3, and desertification is a major crisis for the future of Sri Lanka. In calculating all these losses and economic disadvantages, the loss in the agricultural sector in Sri Lanka could be two to three times the GDP component of agricultural production. God does not need to solve these problems. What is needed is design and purpose. Despite this possibility, the present government of Sri Lanka has made the supply of chemical fertilizers to farmers its most serious problem and a series of dangerous myths imagined by the government.

Due to the ban on fertilizers, the farming community in Sri Lanka is currently facing a severe economic risk and as a country, Sri Lanka is on the verge of a severe food crisis and food insecurity. To cover up the serious food crisis that could ensue, pro-government media and politicians are now showing a series of fantasy and mythical film series called “Organic Farming” for the urban population. The purpose of this article is to expose to the people of Sri Lanka this sudden series of organic stories and the fascist ideologies associated with it for decades.

As Hitler is the ideal political figure of some clergymen in Sri Lanka as well as many of the middle class, they too can take some pleasure in the fascism faced by Sri Lankan agriculture. Although farmers and agronomists in this country are deeply appalled by the ban on chemical fertilizers, the agri-cultists of Colombo and the metropolitan areas, Natha and Rawana generation, who know nothing about agriculture, are overjoyed at the decision. This is because these cults are living by selling the ignorance of the people of the country on the gaps between science and idiocy.

Although organic philosophers in Sri Lanka have put forward a wide range of views on “organic farming”, according to Nature Magazine, the European Union sees organic farming as an ideology that uses the least of science and is largely irrational4. The report also points out that such methods are not suitable for tackling global issues such as climate change and population growth, which are currently prevalent in countries such as Sri Lanka. What is needed further is agricultural pragmatism and flexibility, not ideology.

According to the journals such as Nature5 and Newsweek, organic farming increases farmland as a result of low yields from organic farming, leading to deforestation. In further, organic farming is leading to the extinction of rare species on a large scale due to the loss of wildlife habitats in Sri Lanka as well. According to the reports, organic farming also contributes to the increase in greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. The business of truly organic food is a deceptive, expensive scam – Newsweek points out6.

Organic food promoters in Sri Lanka as well as around the world boast that organic food is more nutritious than traditional food and improves human health. But an experimental comparison of organically grown and conventionally grown foods shows that the quality of the food does not affect the product mass7. Furthermore, organic growers radically promote that organic foods have more flavorful properties or enhanced nutritional value. But researchers have shown that organic products have a relatively low nitrate and protein content. Accordingly, the desired nutritional properties of organic foods are reduced and there is no universal power to cure specific diseases8.

Conventional agriculture or industrial agriculture produces more fruits and vegetables annually, which has now reduced the global cancer rate by 15 percent and stomach cancer by 50-60 percent9. However, world scientific researchers fear that organic food products may increase the risk of cancer due to increased mycotoxin fungal infections5.

Furthermore, in a research paper quoted by the New York Times10, the incorrect implementation of organic farming policies as a result of deforestation and habitat fragmentation has increased the risk of disease transmission from animals to humans. In particular, they observe that this may increase the risk of the rapid spread of destructive viruses, such as corona, to humans. Scientists say the expansion of organic farming is likely to lead to zoological epidemics11.

Organic agriculture will not only rely heavily on natural highly toxic and environmentally destructive pesticides such as copper sulfate but will also intensify the challenge of eradicating hunger worldwide by rejecting the values ​​of the Green Revolution, including artificial fertilizers and hybrid crops that have increased yields5. Through this, Sri Lankas  poverty and hunger will be dramatically increased  in near future.

According to the Annual Review of Resource Economics – Organic agriculture generates more air pollutants and environmental emissions in the production of a unit of food compared to conventional farming12. Therefore, the scientific world has further concluded that organic farming is not the global plan for sustainable agriculture.

Here, according to Linda Chulker-Scott, a professor at Washington State University, who reports to the Guardian newspaper, the global organic business is highly controversial13. It is based on science with chemistry, astrology, and homeopathy and is being questioned by the scientific community.

If so, by whom and for what purpose was organic farming attributed to poor countries like Sri Lanka?

We must first choose the true form of organic farming. Do a Google search for the term “organic farming”. You will receive at least 50 identical names. There are about 200 similar names for occultism alone. There are no such adaptations to a science subject or a clear philosophy.

Despite its various nicknames, the Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner is considered the father of organic farming, called organic farming as “biodynamic farming”. He combined Anthroposophy with science and spirituality and is considered a pioneer of German ideological philosophy and theory and roots14.

Rudolph’s teachings divided all mankind according to the

ethnicity of the people as well as the racial competition made according to their body color15. Used to determine the human purity based on body color. He was classified as a human being according to karma and was called an extremist racist16. He described blacks as inferior souls and whites as intelligent people and described blacks as inferior to evolution17.

This is the Aryan concept of fascism and they are at the top of the human evolutionary hierarchy and I suggest you search the Nazi Auschwitz camp to get some idea of ​​the devastation this attitude has caused to mankind.

Steiner, who, like Hitler, believed in racial purity, said organic farming builds the relationship between soil and man through racial and occult spiritual influences18.

Thus organic farming has been mired in unscientific ideology since its inception and no scientist can confirm its scientific brilliance. Knowing this ignorance, a trade union leader in Sri Lanka said that there is no organic agriculture known to agriculturists. He is the best example of an agri-“cultist” in Sri Lanka. Here, you will raise the question of what science is. The Encyclopedia Britannica defines modern science as any system of knowledge that cares about the physical world and its phenomena and requires unbiased observations and systematic experimentation. There are no dreams and miracles in the sciences.

Agriculture is a science. It has a scientifically discovered knowledge system. Although the scientific progress in Sri Lanka is very small, a scientific methodology is used in agronomy from seed breeding to harvesting.

Every moment agronomy and science, in general, are joining the knowledge system as the world’s most innovative technology. Its ultimate goal is to provide abundant and affordable food safely and efficiently to human-being.

As with all technologies, problems often arise in the applications of traditional agriculture – but rejecting a technology because of problems means losing potential benefits. For example, the problems in the Ayurvedic system, where there are very few inventions, are minimal. There are plenty of mistakes and problems in the new medical field. Research work greatly reduces the risk of these problems. Lee Kuan Yew once said, “The economy is driven by new knowledge, discoveries in science and technology, and innovations brought to market by entrepreneurs.” So science is the only factor in the success of nations.

When Sri Lankan politicians talk about outdated organic farming, policymakers in other successful countries in Asia such as Malaysia, India, Thailand as well as China are talking about biotechnology, nanotechnology, GIS-based agriculture, satellite-derived agriculture, golden rice and also about cutting-edge agronomy like robotic systems.

A Sri Lankan man will have to wait another 50 years under the current economic growth to achieve the current economic benefits enjoyed by the average personal in Malaysia. Children born in Sri Lanka today will not have access to the food or health care that the average person in Malaysia eats today during their lifetime. All these countries use more fertilizers and agrochemicals than we do today and they have recognized science and myth. Sri Lankans has missed their boat for the journey to the development.

With less than 1% of the world’s agricultural land and less than 0.5% of its market share, organic farming, which is targeted at a very small population in Western Europe, is being pursued by organic farming as well as ignorance. It often depends on the nature of the food, as well as the nature of the food business. Henry I. Miller of Stanford University19, who is researching the subject, points out that enthusiastic advisers on organic farming and foods are similar to members of religious denominations. Overall, organic farming organizations, supplies, and followers are similar to some religious groups20. It does not matter which of these groups satisfies their desires. But these cults are playing with the food security of Sri Lanka. With the lives of innocent people in a country21.

However, the superstitious belief in organic food and its origins extend to Nazi Germany and beyond. In this regard, Peter Stdenmeier, a researcher on organic farming in Nazi Germany, notes that the involvement of Nazi institutions in the organic agribusiness was very powerful.

Revealing the historical ideological connection between the Nazis and the organic, Professor Tom Degregory of the University of Houston argues that the Nazis may have been the first pioneers of organic agriculture and anti-technological postmodernism. Surprisingly, the Nazi leadership had a strong belief in renewable energy and kept organic farming and land use plans at a level unmatched by any nation in the past or present.

While these environmental policies may seem to be a departure from the rest of the Nazi program, their environmentalism is based on the racist worldview that shaped the Holocaust. German nationalists and later the Nazis also sought to give the German people –“German blood and soil-rooted diet” free from the mixing of other races. The extremist point of view of the Aryan blood and the environment in which they live, in the theme of Nazism’s environmental theme “Blood and Soil”, is the same as the belief in the purity that some in Ceylon today profess.

Here Nazi ideologues put forward a view of natural things, which was a romanticism rather than synthesis and naturalism rather than scientific analysis. The Nazi blood and soil philosophy speak of resistance to artificial fertilizers and pesticides and newly developed varieties, vegetarianism, the forcible removal of farmers, as well as pure food and medicine22. I entrust you with the policy decisions of the recent history of Sri Lanka and the adjustment of this philosophy.

Since this romantic ecological philosophy is so complex, we will try to explain this with a simple example. Sri Lanka is currently one of the leading deforestation destinations on the world map. Although a local politician has expressed his famous opinion on “Can you eat oxygen”- illustrated that their ignorance of nature and biosystem. But this ignorance would generally applicable to the Sri Lankan government who has no real interest in implementing environmental policies. It takes hundreds of thousands of years for a primary forest to regenerate. Sri Lankan government wanna given natural foods to its citizens, but its ecosystems- the treasure is under heavy threat. 

Timothy A. Tilton has a very clear idea to express the reason behind ​​the fascist thinking of Colombo women looking for organic food as the Sri Lankan peasantry takes to the streets for hunger. This is described below in the chapter on the social roots of his Nazism in the book Dimensions.”Organic farmers pointed to the prospect of a German pantheon of high quality and prestige23.”

It is further discussed in the book Rebels for Soil24: The Global Organic Food and the Rise of the Agrarian Movement. Created in 1942 by Nazi physician Werner Kolath, the slogan was “Keep our food as natural as possible.” These are the bonds of ignorance and obedience.

Except for pure Aryan blood, Nazi fascism influenced people to adopt a natural diet due to possible barriers to obtaining imported food. That is, self-sufficiency is Nazi ideology.

Every time the self-sufficient and protectionist economic policies were implemented, Sri Lanka suffered a severe economic downturn. For example, during the United Front government of 1970/77, when strict economic policies were implemented, the average annual economic growth rate of Sri Lanka’s per capita GDP fell to 0.7 percent. During the decade start from 1970s, South Korea’s economic growth exceeded 8 percent and presently they are over enjoyed with economical wealth thanks to their good policy makers. At that time, the industrial sector in Sri Lanka collapsed due to the existence of many import restrictions and several Asian nations took our markets easily with our closed economic policies. Today’s self-sufficient economy is about selling the people of the country as slaves abroad instead of goods.

And in  late 1970, Sri Lanka was among the 20th largest economies in Asia, had never returned to that place since after implementing so call self-sufficiency policies. Today, Sri Lanka’s overall economic growth rate is lower than the regional and global average. No matter what the people of Sri Lanka think, Sri Lanka is in a very backward economic set. In the 1970s, South Korea was developed at rate of 10 times higher than Sri Lanka. Today, Sri Lankan youth dreaming for Korean jobs. At present, Vietnam is growing ten times faster than Sri Lanka. Vietnam records one of the highest growth rate in Asian agriculture with 3.76 per cent with aim of join the group of 15 largest agricultural nations in the world.

Under the theme of blood and earth, Hitler and his fascist followers were forced to change the diet of the German people. This is a common problem that is constantly faced by the Sri Lankan people. This situation has been exacerbated by politicians as well as the clergy and pro-government media. The interventions of priests who do not know the basic concepts of science or from Sri Lankan food policy to sex education are ridiculous. What is the reason why the people of Ceylon believe the lies of these  VIPs who have settled their families in the West, telling the common people of Ceylon about the feats done during the reign of King Paraknaramabahu?

According to political theories, the people of Sri Lanka can brag about their nationality by listening to thousands of stories about food poisoning, killing animals, changing food nutrition, discovering toxic chemicals, or being a white supremacist, having and not having cholesterol. They don’t want to find out about miserable moms in the Middle East find their rice.

I suggest you continue to explore Nazism, which is intertwined with organic thought in world history. Thus, stories based on occultism and dreams of the gods must be adapted to the science of organic farming, and until then it is an outdated series of ideas that depend on the beliefs of small groups in the Esoteric dynasty.

The scientific community has discovered several technologies that can be scientifically defined with modern agriculture without relying on myth-fiction. Unfortunately, it is doubtful whether Sri Lankan agro-cultists, as well as agronomists, will benefit from these vast scientific methods.

Modern scientific methods such as renewable agriculture and agroforestry can address the environmental problems of traditional agriculture as well as the long-standing land use, infertility, and climate change faced by Sri Lankan farmers in the face of climate change. We call on all science and technology to develop agriculture in a sustainable scientific way without ideologies and to work for the future of Sri Lanka.


References

1. Pathiraja, E., Griffith, G., Farquharson, B. & Faggian, R. The Economic cost of climate change and the benefits from investments in adaptation options for Sri Lankan coconut value chains. (2017).

2. Prakash, T., Wijeratne, A. W. & Fernando, P. Human-elephant conflict in Sri Lanka: patterns and extent. Gajah 51, 16–25 (2020).

3. Dharmasena, P. B., Joseph, K. & Illuppallama, M. LAND DEGRADATION: A THREAT TO AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION IN THE DRY ZONE. in the Workshop on Soil Quality, Assessment of degradation and restoration 65–69 (1994).

4. Leake, A. House of Lords Select committee on the European communities. Session 1998–1999, 16th report. Org. farming Eur. Union. HMSO, London 81–91 (1999).

5. Trewavas, A. Urban myths of organic farming. Nature 410, 409–410 (2001).

6. Henry I. Miller. The Campaign for Organic Food Is a Deceitful, Expensive Scam. © 2021 NEWSWEEK DIGITAL LLC.

7. Woese, K., Lange, D., Boess, C. & Bögl, K. W. A comparison of organically and conventionally grown foods—results of a review of the relevant literature. J. Sci. Food Agric. 74, 281–293 (1997).

8. Williams, C. M. Nutritional quality of organic food: shades of grey or shades of green? Proc. Nutr. Soc. 61, 19–24 (2002).

9. Lovejoy, S. B. Are organic foods safer. Texas Bot. Gard. Soc. Newsletter, Austin, Tex, USA (1994).

10. Bloomfield, L. S. P., McIntosh, T. L. & Lambin, E. F. Habitat fragmentation, livelihood behaviors, and contact between people and nonhuman primates in Africa. Landsc. Ecol. 35, 985–1000 (2020).

11. Einhorn, C. Animal viruses are jumping to humans. Forest loss makes it easier. New York Times 9, (2020).

12. Meemken, E.-M. & Qaim, M. Organic agriculture, food security, and the environment. Annu. Rev. Resour. Econ. 10, 39–63 (2018).

13. Chhabra, E. Biodynamic farming is on the rise–but how effective is this alternative agricultural practice. Guard. Period. March 2017). Available https//www. theguardian. com/sustainable-business/2017/mar/05/biodynamic-farming-agriculture-organic-foodproduction-environment.(Accessed 7th April 2020) (2017).

14. Wikipedia. Rudolf Steiner. wikipedia Rudolf Steiner.

15. Staudenmaier, P. Anthroposophy and Ecofascism. Humanist 2, (2000).

16. Biehl, J. & Staudenmaier, P. Ecofascism: lessons from the German experience. (AK Press Edinburgh, 1995).

17. Webster, C. Photography in the Third Reich: Art, Physiognomy and Propaganda. (2021).

18. Staudenmaier, P. Organic Farming in Nazi Germany: The Politics of Biodynamic Agriculture, 1933–1945. Environ. Hist. Durh. N. C. 18, 383–411 (2013).

19. Henry I. Miller. The Dirty Truth About ‘Organic’. Hoover Institution, Stanford University https://www.hoover.org/research/dirty-truth-about-organic.

20. Panchul, Y. Organic farming–is it a cult or a real technology?

21. Trewavas, A. The cult of the amateur in agriculture threatens food security. Trends Biotechnol. 26, 475–478 (2008).

22. Lacoue-Labarthe, P., Nancy, J.-L. & Holmes, B. The nazi myth. Crit. Inq. 16, 291–312 (1990).

23. Dobkowski, M. N. & Wallimann, I. Towards the Holocaust: the social and economic collapse of the Weimar Republic. (1983).

24. Reed, M. Rebels for the soil: The rise of the global organic food and farming movement. (Routledge, 2010).

25. Muller, A. et al. Strategies for feeding the world more sustainably with organic agriculture. Nat. Commun. 8, 1–13 (2017).

26. Staudenmaier, P. Race and redemption: Racial and ethnic evolution in Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy. Nov. Relig. 11, 4–36 (2008).

27. Uekötter, F. The Green and the Brown: a history of conservation in Nazi Germany. (Cambridge University Press, 2006).

28. Margulies, M. Eco-Nationalism. Consilience 22–29 (2021).

29. DeGregori, T. R. Origins of the organic agriculture debate. (John Wiley & Sons, 2008).

30. Smith, K. Examining Nazi environmentalism during Earth Week. Facing Today-A Facing History Blog. (2019).

31. Treitel, C. Nature and the Nazi diet. Food Foodways 17, 139–158 (2009).

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Latest comments

  • 2
    0

    Consumers buy vegetables at rate of Rs. 100 where farm gate price or farmers cost and profit is around Rs. 25.

    When the customers buy less then all vegetables go in wastage what i do is instead of buying one kg buy half kilo make a soup if the price is low i eat vegetable curry and price is high i take vegetable soup
    the then most of the vegetable in market go spoil even the hotel are closed unattractive to sell and gets tossed poor storage, and insufficient infrastructure are instrumental factors in food waste to control this it might turn to canning in this case organic stuff and loose nutritious value

  • 7
    0

    Can we please know the author’s academic/experience credentials? This will add weight to his article. Sorry about my ignorance if he is well known.

  • 1
    1

    Well, i mean, the Nazi’s, in spite of their misguided, unscientific, and embarrassing race theories did something good at least – they created an organic structure to food production for modern day Westerners to peruse. Indeed, they learned all these organic methods from places like India, saw it as superior, and then went mad that they did not think of it first. They quickly invoked all the traditional farming passions of the Indians from mythology to astrology, and attempted to create their own system with their own traditions they borrowed from around Europe that they actually never had in the first place. They put in erroneous and unscientific race theories into it because they found that they could not survive their winters, and mercantilism was threatening to destroy their traditional food production (introducing items such as pineapple from southern climes that they were sorely allergic to, on top of all kinds of newly-fangled chemicals that drove them crazy, to boost up the mercantilism).

    • 2
      0

      Ramona,
      “(introducing items such as pineapple from southern climes that they were sorely allergic to”
      All this time, in my ignorance, I thought that Europeans knew of pineapples ever since Columbus and his pals brought them from Mexico.
      Thanks for enlightening me that they actually came from Australia.

      • 2
        1

        OC…..only a few had got the taste of it. It did not grow in their climes and the canning of fruits came about only 75 years ago.
        Mercantilism distributed all these things only in the last century. Come on men…..use your brains. Americas.

        • 2
          0

          Ramona,
          I bow to your wisdom and deep knowledge of alternate history. If you didn’t exist in this forum, we would have to invent you.

          • 2
            0

            Commercial around 1912, just before WW1.

  • 3
    1

    But our southern climes from South America to Africa to Asia, with their profusion of sunlight throughout the year and abundant rainfall, produced ancient time-honored traditional agriculture that sustained humankind for eons, and had happy, contented, and honorable humans living in it.

    The trouble is, the organic that is spoken of nowadays, is not organic at all, but a fake organic created in laboratories to replicate traditional organic materials, and to live on top of the commercial structure….rather like the one Sri Lanka is importing from China. In the first place, let the traditional farmer remain. In the 2nd place, do not take over farmland to build commercial buildings and then complain when forests have to be taken over for farming.

  • 4
    0

    As long as Rajapaksa family can eat organic food that is best to the nation and people. Whether you eat or not it is no matter from Rajapaksa family. They are Americans.

  • 2
    0

    Yes, the academic credentials, please. On the whole, I agree with what the author has stated.

  • 0
    1

    Bhutan has adopted organic farming successfully.

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