Colombo 29th August 2008:

In 1840, the German Scientist Justus von Liebig known as the "father of fertilizer" provided scientific evidence that inorganic elements are essential for plant growth and soil fertility. Inspired by this, in the 1890s the pioneering Sri Lankan planters experimented with castor seed cake and bones. The application of fertilizer in our plantations has come a long, long way since then.

Fertilizer is an essential source of nutrients required for plant growth and crop production, particularly in commercial scale operations. Unless the nutrients that are depleted with each harvested yield are adequately replaced at the appropriate time, crop production cannot be sustained and soil fertility will decline with all the consequent dire results. Therefore, fertilizer application has become indispensable and critical for the sustenance of commercial scale agriculture, particularly for tea.

While the organic fertilizers undoubtedly have many advantages with all its multi faceted benefits, both to the plant and to the soil, it has its own [imitations when it comes to a perennial, commercial crop such as tea. Organic manure is bulky, with low content of essential plant nutrients specific to tea and the necessity to use very high application rates makes it impractical for large scale application or blanket coverage.

On the other hand, inorganic fertilizers have adverse effects such as Nitrate teaching, eutrophication of water bodies, environmental impact, greenhouse gas emission and heavy metal uptake by plants, eventually ending in bio magnification in the food chain. Yet, we have to make a choice between the two forms of fertilizer.

Sri Lanka’s own field experiments on fertilizer response was done in 1930 by T. Eden and there is absolutely no doubt that Nitrogen is the chief yield promoter for tea besides being the most expensive and [east persistent and short lived in the soil.

Many factors impact directly on the fertilizer application - the most important being the unit price of Nitrogen. It is also significant that fertilizer is the single most expensive input in the Cost of Production of tea. The cost of fertilizer has been steadily escalating over the years. In 1995, one metric ton of Urea was Rs. 10,000. Last year it had increased five-fold to Rs. 52,000. This year it has doubled - to Rs. 105,000.

With the escalation of cost of fertilizer, its usage had dwindled. According to the Central Bank figures the fertilizer usage for tea in 2003 was 168,000 MT. In 2006, it had reduced to 165,000 MT and by 2007, the industry was using only 128,000 MT. The cost of fertilizer is around Rs. 33/= to 35/= which is 12% to 14% on Cost of Production.

The efficiency, uptake, assimilation of fertilizer application is determined by the soil fertility status, the physiology and the health of the tea bush, climate and the prevailing weather conditions, as well as physical, chemical, biological and hydraulic properties, timing and frequency of application, placement methods, agronomic and management practices, including the mix and the ratio among many other factors.

It must be clearly understood that all inorganic fertilizers affect the soil condition and plant growth and the synergistic and antagonistic effects act in very complex and inter-connected ways.

However, the reality is that, without fertilizer, agriculture output in the world would drop by 50% or more/ No soil in the world is able to continuously supply the full requirement of major or primary nutrients, secondary nutrients and the trace elements for high yielding crops, year after year without being supplemented by fertilizer. Chemical fertilizer is the surest and quickest way of augmenting the nutrient supply of the soil for higher crop production.

Lack of fertilizer directly impacts on the quality and the quantity of leaf of the tea bush. If there is a reduction in fertilizer, it directly impacts on the health and the physiology of the tea bush which will in turn result in lower yield per hectare, resulting in a higher cost of production. Lack of fertilizer will impact on the physical properties and chemical constituents of the tea leaf and this will lead to lower quality of made tea which will result in Sri Lanka losing the only competitive advantage we have over other tea economies and industries in the world. If the tea prices come down, we would not be able to afford whatever limited fertilizer that is applied now.

The Tea Industry provides employment to over 1 Million Sri Lankans including small holders and 250,000 estate workers directly employed in the Regional Plantation Companies apart from the other trades, services and industries related to the plantation sector. Any reduction in the earning capacity of such a large number of people involved in the industry will have a direct impact on the dependents and their quality of life and social well being. This would create negative social conditions and the socio economic impact of such a situation would have debilitating effects on the already fragile social fabric of our country.

The Government and the policy makers must realize the importance and undertake a critical cost benefit analysis of the necessity of granting a practical and an effective fertilizer subsidy for the Tea Industry which has been the life blood of our nation for such a tong time although it has faced many challenges and vicissitudes along the way and has managed to overcome them. The current spiralling cost of fertilizer is perhaps the most critical one of them all, in the history of tea in Sri Lanka.