Vandana Shiva, proclaimed “Hero for the Green Century” in 2002 and winner of numerous awards (including the Right Livelyhood Award and the Save the World Award) is considered an icon of sustainability, the agricultural turnaround and degrowth in the West. For decades she has been calling for a move away from modern agriculture.
In 2021, Sri Lanka was the first government to follow her advice. The experiment failed miserably.
It was not Sri Lanka’s first attempt to become a toxin-free nation. In 2015, the country imposed a glyphosate ban as a first step after the Sri Lankan toxicologist Channa Jayasumana published his hypothesis in 2014 that glyphosate is the cause of the chronic kidney disease of unknown origin (CDKu) that is widespread in Sri Lanka.
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However, the hastily enacted glyphosate ban proved a disaster. The tea plantations were overgrown by weeds so that they could hardly be cultivated. Harvest losses cost tea exporters the equivalent of around 100 million euros in 2017 alone. When growing rice, water consumption increased by 20 percent due to additional flooding, which was necessary to control the weeds without using pesticides.
[Editor’s note: This article was originally published in German and has been translated and edited for clarity.]
