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Fertiliser issuance following soil-tests 

17 Apr 2021

With the use of chemical fertiliser in farming being popularised by government agencies since the early 1970s, Sri Lanka now faces the consequences of fertiliser overuse, which has caused soil and water pollution.  According to the Department of Agriculture statistics, fertiliser use in the Nuwara Eliya District was three times the recommended amount, while it was twice the recommended level in vegetable cultivation areas in Welimada; which has prompted the Ministry of Agriculture to implement a national fertiliser programme to conduct soil-testing in cultivation zones before recommending and issuing fertiliser to farmers.  Minister of Agriculture Mahindananda Aluthgamage, commenting on the initiative, stated that from the next cultivation cycle onwards, fertiliser will only be issued to farmers after the soil is tested for its chemical composition. “In order to carry out the necessary tests, we have purchased 517 soil-testing kits from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations (UN) and the agriculture officers have completed their training with the FAO on how to use these soil-testing kits as well.”  Aluthgamage alleged that the previous Government changed laboratory reports and distributed poisonous fertiliser to farmers as mud fertiliser. He noted that in 2019 alone, 81,000 metric tonnes of fertiliser worth $ 1.5 billion was imported and 55 laboratory records were changed, so that substandard fertiliser could be released to the farmers due to the fertiliser shortage the country was facing at the time.  “With the Government specifying the standards of fertiliser that could be imported recently and tenders having been called in accordance with international standards, no importer has applied for those tenders,” Aluthgamage explained. He claimed that this was because they were unable to import fertiliser to match the required standard.  “Going forward, a soil test report will be mandatory to apply fertiliser, from the coming Yala season. For the first time in history, a national fertiliser programme will be launched after inspecting soil in all districts of the country,” Aluthgamage elaborated.  Aluthgamage pointed out that over the years, farmers have been led to believe that overuse of fertiliser would offer them better yields, but as studies have proven, the overuse of fertiliser is adding lead to the soil and water. Therefore, the Government is now looking to encourage farmers to reduce the use of chemical fertilisers.  “The farmer in our country thought that the more fertiliser he applied, the better the yield. So far, it has not been possible to test such soil and implement a national programme on fertiliser use, because fertiliser importers were ahead of that programme. No one considered the damage to the country, the farmer, and the land; only the need to bring fertiliser to the country. Although soil testing centres had been built across the country, spending millions, while the Department had issued circular instructions, it had not become a reality on the ground,” Aluthgamage noted.  During a meeting organised by the Rehabilitation of Degraded Agriculture Land Project (RDALP) of the UN’s FAO, a group of agri-experts deliberated on how soil-test-based fertiliser application could drastically reduce fertiliser use in agriculture.  FAO Assistant Country Representative Dr. D.B.T. Wijerathne said that the discussions were based on several studies carried out by government agencies and universities, during which they had revealed that the chemical fertiliser usage was extremely high.  Launching the pilot programme, the FAO had donated 100 soil test kits to the Ministry of Agriculture to expand soil-test-based fertiliser application in the central highlands in November 2020.  “The FAO will work with the Government of Sri Lanka to reduce soil and water pollution and expand sustainable land management (SLM) through future FAO projects. The RDALP and the Department of Agriculture (DoA) conducted soil test-based fertiliser application field trials in the Kandy, Badulla, and Nuwara Eliya Districts, which had indicated that fertiliser use in vegetable and potatoes can be reduced by 40%,” Dr. Wijeratne said.  The FAO and DoA has at present developed a site-specific fertiliser management system for sustainable crop production in Sri Lanka and has introduced portable soil test kits that can be used in the field. 

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