by Sarath Amarasiri
A sum of about Rs. 1500 million is spent annually by the goverment to provide a price concession to users of chemical fertilizer. In addition public funds are used to provide irrigation water and agricultural research and extension services at no cost to the cultivator. Government also provides education from kindergarten to the university at no cost to the student, free health services throughout the country and assistance to unemployed and the poor through numerous programmes. The state expenditure for education and health in 2000 was about Rs. 31,000 million and Rs. 21,000 million respectively. Owing to very limited financial resources available to the state and the heavy burden of the large public debt, it is in order for governments to consider the possibilities of getting beneficiaries of public assistance to pay for some of the services provided to them

Important Inputs

It is well known that fertilizers both chemical and organic are important inputs that lead to increased crop yields, higher farm incomes and maintenance of soil fertility. All the crop research institutes in Sri Lanka have conducted much research on the subject and provided location wise recommendations on what fertilizers to use, what amounts to add, when to add and how to apply them. Furthermore, especially after the oil crisis of 1974 when prices of chemical fertilizer sky rocketted, many national research organizations actively encouraged growers to use all available sources of organic materials. This emphasis is still made by state research institutes as well as by some Non Governmental Organizations. Scientists have shown that if the current stagnating yield barriers of crops are to be broken, if farm incomes are to be increased from the present low levels, and if food imports are to cost less than the present Rs. 50 billion a year, more chemical and organic fertilizer need to be added especially in the non plantation crop sector that includes paddy, chilli, onion, mungbean, cowpea, vegetables and other field crops.

Primary purpose

The primary purpose of adding fertilizer is to supply plant nutrients. Although man has been adding wood ashes, crop residues, animal dung and other organic manures for well over twelve thousand years, the use of chemical fertilizer had to await the identification of the nutrients required for plant growth by scientific inquiry and the development of the industry for its manufacture. In fact addition of chemical fertilizer is a relatively recent event of the last 150 years in the long history of agriculture.

Most students of soil science are aware of the experiment conducted by Van Helmont in the 16th century in Brussels where he planted a shoot of willow weighing 5 pounds in a large pot containing 200 pounds of soil, added only rain water or distilled water to it and harvested the tree five years later recording a weight of 169 pounds and 3 ounces. The weight of the soil at the end of the experiment was 199 pounds and 14 ounces. He disregarded the two ounce loss of soil and concluded that the 164 pounds of plant growth arose from water alone. Van Helmont’s experiment led to the belief among the scientific community at that time that water was the elixir of plant life.

However, in 1699 a British scientist Woodward reported getting very much higher crop yields by using water from River Thames and from Hyde Park conduit which had sediment and dissolved substances than the yields from adding rain water, indicating that water is not the sole provider of nourishment to plants, and hinted that Van Helmont should not have dismissed the two ounce loss of soil from the willow tree experiment as inconsequential.

Continued research

With continued research in the laboratory, greenhouse and in the fields, scientists were able to prove that plants required a number of elements for growth and continuation of their life cycles. With the current state of knowledge, plants need seventeen nutrients for growth. They are; carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, sulphur, iron, copper, manganese, zinc, boron, chlorine, molybdenum and nickel. All seventeen nutrients are equally important and no plant can grow unless all are provided. However, they are present in plants in vastly differing amounts. For example, a plant may contain as much as 2% nitrogen but only 0.000001% molybdenum. Yet no plant can grow without molybdenum. The discovery of the essential plant nutrients took a long period of time exceeding two hundred years, with thousands of researchers contributing to this endeavour. The possibility exists of course that some more elements may be declared essential plant nutrients in the future.

Although seventeen nutrients have been shown to be necessary for plant growth, and are thus removed by every plant at harvest, soil chemical analysis, plant tissue analysis and field experimentation have shown that only a few have to be added to plants since the others are found to occur naturally in air, water and soil in amounts adequate to meet the requirements of plants. As a result only three nutrients nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium (referred to as NPK – the symbols of the three elements) are most commonly added in chemical fertilizer. There are few instances where zinc, magnesium, boron and other nutrients are also recommended by local scientists to some crop soil combinations.

Sri Lanka cannot be pleased with the current levels of fertilizer added to crops. On an average, much less is added than recommended leading to non realisation of potential yields of many crops.

A study of yield distribution among farmers in System H of the Mahaweli project has shown that although the average rice yields of the 35,000 farmers in Maha season is about 100 bushels per acre, the yield range is from 150 to 75 bushels per acre. The reasons for such large yield differentials with the crops receiving same solar radiation, nearly same quantities of irrigation water and growing on soils having similar physical and chemical characteristics have been shown to be more sociological than technical.

The farmers who obtain low yields are invariably those who add low quantities of fertilizer and the main reason for the low use is the lack of cash to purchase fertilizer rather than ignorance of its good effects, for such effects are clearly visible from the neighbouring farms in the same tract that yield 150 bushels per acre. Most of the poorer farmers are in debt to the formal banking system in the area, are blacklisted by them and consequently debarred from borrowing. They are therefore compelled to borrow from the village money lenders at rates of interest as high as 12% per month. The System H example of low fertilizer use in paddy due to insolvency of farmers is replicated elsewhere in the country too, and its ill effects are applicable to many other crops as well.

While man cannot increase solar radiation, nor change the soil type nor influence rainfall, several instances have been reported where problems of a sociological nature have been solved with the collective efforts of farmers, state officials and the community. One such example is the success achieved by the Department of Agriculture in a recent activity that significantly increased crop productivity .

In this programme an entire yaya (paddy tract) was selected that included twenty five to thirty farmers, quality seed was used, organic fertilizer and chemical fertilizer were applied in correct quantities and other good farming practices were adopted. The chemical fertilizer was supplied on credit. The extension officers of the central and provincial Departments of Agriculture worked closely with the farmers. The result was a spectacular yield increase and the fertilizer loan was paid back.

This land mark exercise has indicated that if the principles and practices of the yaya programme can be applied over time and space, the productivity of our lands can be increased, the poorer sections of the farming community can be socially and economically elevated and agriculture can once again make a significant contribution to the national economy.

Application of fertilizer was a key to the success of the above programme. Fertilizer is a strategic input that will largely determine the success or failure of Sri Lankan agriculture in the short and long term. When application of fertilizer in Sri Lanka is low as at present even with the operation of the fertilizer subsidy, what will be the result if the subsidy is removed ? Farmers who add low levels of fertilizer will add still less, crops yields will decrease, food imports will increase, and rural poverty will increase with multiple deleterious social and economic effects to the nation including increasing malnutrition. The effect on decline of soil fertility consequent to reduced fertilizer applications can have short and long term effects adversely affecting the capacity of a country to suddenly provide its food requirements in times of international conflicts and also jeopardizing the aspirations of future generations who may want much higher levels of productivity from the land than at present. Serious decline in soil fertility levels have been recently reported in some African countries consequent to low fertilizer use resulting from extremely high prices of fertilizer.

It is said that the state is the ultimate owner of farmland and that the farmer is only the trustee. The authority of the state is spelt out in the Agrarian Development Act No. 46 of 2000 which states that "It shall be the duty and responsibility of every owner cultivator or occupier of any agricultural land to cultivate such lands with a view to improving the productivity and maintaining efficient standards of production both as to quantity and quality of the produce". The act further states that "The Commissioner-General of the Department of Agrarian Development can issue an order requiring the owner cultivator or occupier of such land to pay compensation of a sum not exceeding Rupees five thousand for each acre of land if the owner cultivator or occupier does not achieve efficient standards of production".

If the state is the undisputed owner of the land and exhorts the farmer to achieve high levels of productivity with threats of penalties if this is not done as indicated above, it also has the responsibility to assist the large number of poor farmers to achieve the high productivity levels expected from their lands. I do not argue that the continuation of the Rs 1500 million a year subsidy on fertilizer is the one and only means of ensuring that sufficient fertilizer is added to our crops. I state however, that it is the role of the government to ensure that the lands are fertilized regularly and that the fertility of the soils be maintained for present and future generations. This is the duty and responsibility of the ultimate owner of the land – the public.