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Fertiliser shortage: Govt. to procure more fertiliser

11 Jun 2020

By Skandha Gunasekara The Government was in the process of procuring more fertiliser while beginning an initiative to shift to organic fertiliser. National Fertiliser Secretariat Director Mahesh Gammanpila said that they were in the process of carrying out a survey to determine how much would be required. “We are conducting a survey to find out how much more would be needed for the October/November cultivation period. Some have estimated an additional 400,000 metric tonnes, but that is an unacceptable amount,” he said. He then revealed that an initiative was under way to have farmers shift from chemical fertiliser to organic fertiliser. “We pointed out that excessive use of chemical fertiliser was harming our soil. Therefore, we are not implementing a programme to transition farmers from chemical to organic fertiliser,” Gammanpila said. He went on to say that officials had pointed out to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa that the fertiliser shortage was due to excessive farming during lockdown. “During curfew and as a result of lockdown measures, farmers have cultivated almost twice as much as last year. Consequently, the amount of fertiliser we had procured was not enough for such excess farming. We informed the President of this,” he said, referring to the meeting they had had with the President on Tuesday (9).


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