Packets of White Powder
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Photo courtesy Arsenic and toxins found in baby rice food – what you need to know
Suddenly, scores of packets of white powder began appearing in the homes of many farmers we were working with. They were organic farmers, who respected their field and soil. They would never poison their farm knowingly. When questioned, they made a wry face and declared that ‘the stuff was forced upon them’ as a part of some government program. Some resorted to putting it onto their home gardens to get rid of it. This means that, the poisoning of our soils is extending from the agricultural field to the very home garden and the farmer’s enslavement to the chemical salesmen becomes further confirmed.
Addiction is an easy ploy for enslavement. In a port city in France, goes a story; there used to live some of the most unscrupulous criminals. They were the drug traffickers who deal in the cruel drug heroin. Heroin is addictive, it creates a sense of well being; but one requires increasingly large doses to maintain this sense of well being. The victim who begins to take it becomes even more dependent on the drug and freedom from it becomes increasingly difficult. The traffickers it is alleged, give free doses to children in the 12, 13 age group, in packets of white powder, knowing well that the gullible, naïve, children will soon become addicted. When they become addicted they have to pay and the price they will have to pay increases with the addiction. They are trapped in a vicious dependency cycle and there is no way out. They end up being the chattel of the criminals.
To understand the game being played before us, it is important to understand soil. To many of us soil is the stuff that holds trees up. We see it as a solid surface for us to walk, ride or construct upon. Its usefulness in our daily lives does not exceed much beyond providing a substrate and nutrient for our crops. On closer examination this ‘solid mass’ is home to thousands of species, it acts a sea to thousands of species that travel through it. It is also the biological filter that detoxifies a large proportion of the poisons that we apply to the environment we live in. It is a world as complex as, and most certainly older than, the world that lives on its surface. It lies continuous over most of the land surface of the planet it is in a very real sense the ‘living skin’ of our planet.
The world of soil is bizarre to us who live on the surface. It is opaque to light and mostly solid. Communication is by chemicals, such as pheromones, or physical, such as vibrations. Movement is slow; the faster organisms like the worms are the giants of this world, tunneling through at a fairly rapid rate measured in centimeters per minute. More common are the fungi that move by growing through the soil at rates measured in centimeters per month, or the bacteria, which have rates, measured in centimeters per year.
It is a busy world, one gram of ordinary farmyard soil can contain over 1 billion individual bacteria, over 100 million individual actinomyctes and over 1 kilometer of fungal hyphpae, notwithstanding plants like algae and animals like collembolids, nematodes or worms. But most importantly it provides the energy for the plants that grow on it. It is estimated that a hectare of good farm or forest soil provides over 10 Horsepower in energy to the system daily. When chemical fertilizers are added to such soils, the ecosystem is destroyed, biomass is lost and the productive capacity goes down dramatically often to less than 1 horsepower. To maintain productivity in these soils will now require the balance to be provided from outside in the form of chemical fertilizer. Once destroyed the soil ecosystem is slow to recover. Thus the farmer is trapped! As the nation needs to produce its food the government is trapped! It has to provide the drug (fertilizer) to the farmer at a subsidized price. Currently over 50 billion rupees and we are increasing the land area addicted by distributing free packets of white powder ? Where is the gain? To answer that question one has to ‘follow the money’, one has to answer the question as to ‘where does that 50 billion rupees go?’ After all, someone must benefit from it.
But one thing is clear it is certainly not the farmer or the nation.
this article highlights an important issue, but is frustratingly thin on specifics. could we have a more thorough and professional piece on this issue outlining the context and known facts on this issue?
Dear Blue,
Certainly, give me a week or so to get back to town as I am doing some rainforest restoration at the present.
Ranil
Thank you for the very good introduction to this very important field of science.
We could call this citizen science.
Please go on.
Salesmen are pushing fertilisers on farmers.
Is he occupation army pushing drugs on Tamil youth:
http://www.groundviews.org/2010/09/23/submissions-before-lessons-learnt-reconciliation-committee-llrc-by-chandra-jayaratne/
Submission before Lessons Learnt & Reconciliation Committee (LLRC) by Chandra Jayaratne, 23 September 2010:
‘’… IDP’s being denied access to their former places of residence ….
Preventing willing and capable NGO’s/INGO’s, international community and Diaspora from helping people in need at their most vulnerable moment of need ….. Free availability of liquor, cigarettes and narcotics …..”
I learnt from my Tamil friends how the fertiliser salesmen started to flood Kilinochchi after 2003.
So we need to have a network of local groups all over the country under the leadeship of people like this author so that the salesmen have no ”place to hide”.
Ranil
Thank you.
Preserving the environment of the whole country in good health would/could bring justice and peace to ALL.
Thanks for this, Ranil but yes please provide more specifics and also connect the dots to the big picture.. i.e. the current un-balanced post-war development paradigm in Lanka that is increasing inequality – led my a Minister of Economic Development who has not got a basic degree and knows nothing about environment, economics or development:
1. The regime’s rush to increase agricultural productivity and grow the economy and GDP at all costs in order to pay off the huge debt that it has accumulated – without concern for environment or people – no social or environmental impact assessments done before so-called development projects.
2. While development is important the current model is skewed to benefit corporate capital and the Rajapakse regimes’s local crony capitalists. The poor farmers our being duped and dispossessed by big money.
3. The rush to develop agri business and sell fruit and veg. overseas is partly to pay off the huge deficit that the joker called the governor of the Central Bank Nivad Cabraal has run up borrowing on international markets at commercial rates to fund Rajapakse’s magalo-maniac projects like the Commonwealth Games bids and car races.
4. In short, the poisoned fruit of Rajapakse style “development” is apparent.
In repose to a more detailed description of the trap that we being led into in the name of development allow me to preface my comments by directing the reader to a few background notes. I hope the interconnections will become evident.
http://groundviews.org/2011/10/17/development-or-maldevelopment/
http://groundviews.org/2011/11/08/desire-violence-and-leadership/
http://groundviews.org/2011/07/02/subsidizing-addiction/
http://www.economichitman.com/
It is true that the current style of development seems devoid of an understanding of national realities and fundamental science. But in ‘connecting the dots’ it is also important to identify the ‘facilitators’ of this process. How is it that uneducated, thugs who get into positions of power, suddenly get transformed into efficient money making machines with a deep understanding on how the government financial system works ? The transformation takes only weeks if not days. Magic portions ? or is it the magic advice from the bureaucrats who are well versed in the system and who have become willing advisors to guide and facilitate the corruption ?
HI Ranil
I am a researcher from India and am visiting sri lanka next week for a story on the health impacts of fertilisers and pesticides in sri lanka. I have read your articles and it seems that you do have a very good idea of the status at present in sri lanka, could you please give me your number or e mail id so that i can get in touch with you once i am there to get a better understanding of the situation.
you can mail me on savvy@cseindia.org.
regards