“Back in March, as the world was still watching the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Reuters filed an ominous dispatch from Sri Lanka about the consequences of its government’s attempt to ban the use of artificial fertilizers:
“I cannot recall any time in the past when we had to struggle so much to get a decent harvest,” said [W. M.] Seneviratne, a lean 65-year-old with a shock of silver hair, who has been farming since he was a child.
“Last year, we got 60 bags from these two acres. But this time it was just 10,” he added.
The dramatic fall in yields follows a decision last April by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to ban all chemical fertilizers in Sri Lanka – a move that risks undermining support among rural voters who are key to his family’s grip on Sri Lankan politics.
Although the ban was rolled back after widespread protests, only a trickle of chemical fertilizers made it to farms, which will likely lead to an annual drop of at least 30% in paddy yields nationwide, according to agricultural experts.
Sri Lanka is a small island nation off the coast of India.When Hollywood needs a jungle, it films there. The Bridge on the River Kwai, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and one of the Jungle Book movies all included scenes shot on the island. It is about as far as a country can get from the United States, and when news about the country has reached Americans, it was usually bad news — such as the government’s long battle against the Tamil Tigers terrorist group, or the devastating 2004 tsunami.
Yet with the Tamil insurgency defeated, in the past few years, Sri Lanka had begun to look like a success story by the standards of the region.As our Dominic Pino laid out:
By 2019 it had been elevated from a lower-middle-income country to an upper-middle-income country by World Bank classifications. Its GDP per capita, adjusted for purchasing power, is about double that of India, about the same as the poorer countries of Eastern Europe such as Ukraine and Moldova, and only slightly behind Brazil. Its largest city of Colombo had become a tourist destination. It’s not a wealthy country by any stretch of the imagination, but it was doing well for its neighborhood, and its 22 million inhabitants saw a dramatic improvement in their quality of life in the past decade.
But everything fell apart fast: Inflation is raging out of control, the government defaulted on its debts, an energy crisis led to rolling blackouts, and the food shortages spurred massive crowds of people to storm into the houses of the country’s wealthy rulers and effectively topple the government.Inflation in Sri Lanka has reached jaw-dropping levels: “Consumer prices rose 54.6 percent in June from a year earlier, with transport surging 128 percent from the previous month and food 80 percent.”
Back in May, I noted that the Russian invasion of Ukraine meant that two of the world’s biggest grain exporters were effectively taken out of the market, as well as Russian exports of fertilizer. I also said:
The global fertilizer shortage is likely to reduce crop yields in a lot of places, which means we may be dealing with a worse problem in the coming months and years. Using less fertilizer usually translates into fewer crops. . . . Hungry people do things that well-fed people do not. They protest and they riot. Hungry people move across borders as refugees. They are more easily recruited into terrorist or extremist groups. . . . Hungry populaces are more likely to turn to demagogues promising an easy solution.Where there is hunger, there is conflict.
Countries such as Zambia and Lebanon are already in the grip of crises and are seeking international help to provide loans or restructure their debts, while Pakistan’s new government, which came to power in April, says that it narrowly averted a debt default in recent weeks, driven by a soaring fuel-import bill. Foreign-exchange reserves held by the central bank dwindled to cover less than two months’ worth of exports, largely closing off Pakistan’s prospects of tapping international financial markets. China, a close ally, provided a $2.3 billion loan in June to shore up the foreign-currency reserves.
But Pakistan stands out, as that country has an estimated 165 nuclear weapons. One Indian business publication’s assessment of the Pakistani economy reads like a horror show, and it explicitly compares that country to Sri Lanka: runaway foreign debt; skyrocketing cost of foreign imports; a collapsing currency; falling exports; shortages of food, fuel, and medicines; hoping for rescue from the International Monetary Fund but having no negotiating leverage; and a recovery plan that relies on people drinking less tea and exporting donkeys to China.
You would like to think that a country with a large nuclear arsenal would also know how to manage its borrowing, pay its debts, and keep its economy running smoothly. Then again, there’s probably some Pakistani out there wondering how an American could have the nerve to make that criticism.“
Such fabricated crises born of utterly unnecessary, completely counterproductive, indeed deliberately destructive government policies brings to mind one of our favorite scenes from Three Days of the Condor, in which the somewhat naive character played by Robert Redford is denigrating the CIA for having contingency plans to takeover the oil fields of the Middle East to ensure America’s energy needs. The exchange grows more applicable every day Dimocrats control the country.
Since we’re on the subject of fabricated crises born of utterly unnecessary, completely counterproductive, indeed deliberately destructive government policies, in today’s EnvironMental Moment, a forward from The Gouge‘s energy expert Jeff Foutch informs us…
“For more than 60 years, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has known that the changes occurring to planetary weather patterns are completely natural and normal. But the space agency, for whatever reason, has chosen to let the man-made global warming hoax persist and spread, to the detriment of human freedom.
It was the year 1958, to be precise, when NASA first observed that changes in the solar orbit of the earth, along with alterations to the earth’s axial tilt, are both responsible for what climate scientists today have dubbed as “warming” (or “cooling,” depending on their agenda). In no way, shape, or form are humans warming or cooling the planet by driving SUVs or eating beef, in other words.
But NASA has thus far failed to set the record straight, and has instead chosen to sit silently back and watch as liberals freak out about the world supposedly ending in 12 years because of too much livestock, or too many plastic straws…”
Which begs the question, is there any government bureaucracy Americans can trust to tell the truth?!?
Next, we offer a septet of selections certain to pique the interest of inquiring Conservative minds:
(4). With every passing day, Florida governor Ron DeSantis makes The Donald seem not only more and more unnecessary, but downright unattractive.
(5). In what should serve as a cautionary tale to American Conservatives, Thomas Corbett-Dillon, former advisor to Boris Johnson, offers his thoughts on the how and why of the former PM’s precipitous fall:
(7). Speaking of utter idiots, if there was ever a question LeBron meets the definition, this ought to clinch it.
Which brings us, appropriately enough, to The Lighter Side:
Then there’s these from Balls Cotton…
…Speed…
…the lovely Shannon…
…and last, but certainly never least, Marcus Aurelius:
By the way, this Jesse Watters segment puts this particular problem into proper perspective:
Finally, another sign The Apocalypse is Upon Us, as CBS Los Angeles is reporting…
Starbucks to permanently close 6 LA locations after reported drug use by public, crime concerns
“Coffee mega-giant, Starbucks is set to permanently close 16 locations, the company told CBSLA Tuesday. Six locations in Los Angeles are set to shut down.
The closures come after the coffee chain received reports from workers of reported crime concerns, including drug use by members of the public, the company said…”
Maybe Biden will just order them to stay open!
Magoo
P.S. though the combined run time is a bit lengthy, when you have the time, you owe it to yourself to catch the Tucker clips featured as our Video of the Day, accessible through link #2 immediately beneath the Quote of the Day at the top of the page. Our description speaks for itself.
Video of the Day
Oh what tangled webs we weave…!!!
Tales of the Darkside
Call us a tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorist, but we believe Tucker nails the true nature of the WuFlu. Here’s a link to his follow-up segment: https://youtu.be/35hSxOYABu4
On the Lighter Side
SNL in a rare moment of honesty and humor, both qualities its been lacking for years.
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