Sri Lanka's food crash a lesson for the world

The world's focus - thanks also to the anti-animal agriculture movement often hidden within green agendas and groups - has largely been on animals (especially cows) as a target for the major source of global emmissions.

The newly emerging push to reduce fertiliser use, which we've seen in Sri Lanka, the Netherlands and now Canada, will have broad implications - especially if the trend spreads.

Grain is not just a food. It's a base material for a whole range of products and uses.

Ramifications of reduced supply, such as hunger around the world, have been quick to emerge with the war in Ukraine, which is really only affecting one region's supply.

Broader supply reductions, from sudden bans on inputs, could have dire consequences and would also affect a whole range of ingredients in our food supplies, through to biofuels and even products like biodegradable plastics.

The distruption - especially if a number of countries jumped on this bandwagon all at once - would be catastrophic.

Related reading

Nitrous oxide emissions mandate in Canada may have implications for nitrogen use in Australia

Sri Lanka crisis has its roots in hastily implemented organic farming mandate

In Australia, access to grain through the most recent drought (even though it got fairly expensive) helped to maintain herds and flocks, as well as provide a finishing avenue via feedlots for stock that otherwise would have been unfinishable due to the extent of the dry.

Grain was also the basis for conatainment lots, where breeding nuclei were maintained. Imagine the rebuild pressure had producers not had that capacity.

The new Labor government came to power on a climate ticket, and its Environment and Water Minister Tanya Plibersek is now armed with a fresh State of the Environment Report, which has already become a platform for talk around "protecting" more land, a proposal for a new independent environment protection agency, and big changes to (if not a whole new) Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.

One upside for those not living in Sri Lanka, is that it wasn't us that had to be the fert-free guinea pigs.

Any dietician could have explained that going cold turkey is a bad way to quit.

Such decisions show how things can really go wrong when goverments make idealogical decisions without understanding the intracacies of what those policies affect.

Let's heed those errors as timely warnings.