BBC Still In Denial About Sri Lanka’s Ban on Fertilisers

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

One of our readers sent me this correspondence he had with the BBC a few weeks ago:

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Below is a letter I wrote at the beginning of October to Tony Grant, the editor of Radio 4’s ‘From our Own Correspondent’:

Dear Mr Grant,

I listened with disbelief at your piece from Sri Lanka broadcast on the 28^th of September, in which your correspondent, Samira Hussain, reported that the economic crisis that devastated the country a couple of years ago was brought about by the corruption of the then ‘right wing’ government.  Whilst I daresay there was (and remains) a fair deal of corruption in its administration, the cause of that disaster (and it was a disaster for tens of thousands of rural farmers) was not that.  It was the catastrophic crop failures that followed the government’s responding to the demands of the global climate change lobby by banning the import of fertilizers. 

I don’t believe that you and your colleagues are ignorant of this, or of the misery and starvation that was the outcome.  Rather, that such cause runs counter to the supposedly truth-seeking national broadcaster’s Climate Change agenda.  Indeed, I recall at the time of the disaster how shamelessly it managed to avoid any mention of banned fertilizer, so perhaps this lie of omission is what you’ve since all come to believe. 

That the Corporation has become an unquestioning propagandist for this controversial creed is lamentable.  Serving up such dishonest journalism is extraordinary.

To my surprise, the normally combative Grant ( with whom I’ve had previous correspondence) failed to reply, instead forwarding my letter to BBC Complaints who in turn responded (misspelling my name) with a typical piece of obfuscation:

Reference CAS-7944404-Z4T1X8

Dear Steven,Thank you for contacting us in relation to our broadcast of From Our Own Correspondent on 28 September and for sharing your thoughts with us.We note your concerns relating to Samira Hussain’s report due to concerns of factual inaccuracies.The primary focus of this report was to provide an overview of the current political landscape in Sri Lanka, including the election of a new president, Anura Kumara Dissanayake and the backdrop of the country’s ongoing economic challenges. As part of this Samira mentioned the role corruption and financial mismanagement by the previous government, particularly the Rajapaksa administration exacerbating the economic crisis.That said, we do understand your point regarding the impact the government’s ban on chemical fertilisers had. While the report did not explore this specific aspect, this is something that we have featured in our wider coverage:https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-62149554https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-58485674https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-61028138

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Below are my thoughts!

The BBC clearly want him to believe that those three links are recent. They are not. This is the first one is a piece of disinformation from Marco Silva two years ago, which claims that the fertiliser issue was only a minor issue:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-62149554

The second is another BBC Verify piece, which again dismissed fertilisers as being the main cause of the food problem.

The third’s only reference to fertilisers was an outright lie, that imports were banned because of foreign currency shortages:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-61028138

We need to remember how the BBC reported the Sri Lanka crisis at the time:

Leaves from the lush green tea estates covering the hills of central Sri Lanka end up in cups across the world.

Tea is the island’s biggest export, normally bringing in more than $1bn a year, but the industry is being hard hit by the unprecedented economic crisis.

Most of Sri Lanka’s tea is grown by smaller farmers, like Rohan Tilak Gurusinghe, who owns two acres of land close to the village of Kadugunnawa.

But he’s still reeling from the impact of a sudden, poorly thought-out government decision to ban chemical fertiliser last year.

“I’m losing money,” he tells the BBC despondently. “Without fertiliser or fuel, I can’t even think about the future of my business.”

The ban, ordered to try to protect the country’s dwindling foreign reserves, was one of a number of disastrous policy decisions implemented by the now-ousted President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, with agricultural output falling significantly.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-62221355

Even back then, they were still trying to blame the ban on “dwindling foreign reserves”. In fact it was the massive drop in tea exports which led to those dwindling reserves.

The truth is simple and there for the BBC and everybody else to see, because this is what Sri Lanka’s President proclaimed in Glasgow at COP26 in October 1921, a few months after the ban was introduced.

Nitrogen is an abundant element that is essential to the sustenance of all living things.

However, reactive nitrogen generated by human activity and released into ecosystems worsens climate change.

Overuse of nitrogen, especially in fertilisers, has adverse impacts on soil, water, air, and human health.

For decades, chronic kidney disease has been a serious issue in Sri Lanka’s agricultural heartland.

The overuse of chemical fertilisers has contributed significantly to this problem.

It is in this context that my Government took firm steps to reduce imports of chemical fertilizer, and strongly encourage organic agriculture.

Speech by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa at the COP 26 Side Event, on 31 Oct 2021, in Glasgow, Scotland, UK

It could not be any plainer.

But the BBC could never admit that Sri Lanka’s disastrous harvest was due to climate change policies. That would not do, would it?