Monday 4th May, 2026
Rice farmers are in a paddy. They are complaining that they have been left without fertilisers for the current cultivation season. The government has reportedly announced that it will not be able to meet the paddy farmers’ fertiliser requirements fully due to the current global supply disruptions. It has thus contradicted itself. Previously, it said there were adequate fertiliser stocks in the country, and there would be no shortages. It should not have given such an assurance amidst a global fertiliser crisis.
The West Asia conflict, especially the closure of the Hormuz Strait, has adversely impacted the global fertiliser supply. The Persian Gulf is a major hub of global fertiliser production and exports. Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Oman are among the world’s leading exporters of nitrogen fertilisers, including urea and ammonia, amounting to 30-35 percent of global urea exports and around 20-30 percent of ammonia exports, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN. The FAO has said that overall, up to 30 percent of global fertiliser exports pass through the Hormuz Strait, the closure of which has disrupted the global fertiliser supply chains. Production cuts and shipping constraints have stalled an estimated 3-4 million tonnes for fertiliser trade per month, and the global fertiliser prices could average 15-20 percent higher during the first half of 2026 if the present crisis continues. Even the American Farm Bureau Federation has complained of fertiliser woes. It has written to President Donald Trump and the Congressional leaders, emphasising the severe economic pressures facing America’s farmers and ranchers. Falling crop prices, skyrocketing expenses, etc., due to rising fertiliser prices are creating conditions that are too much for farm families to bear, it has pointed out.
Anger blinds people to reason. It is therefore possible for politicians and political parties to weaponise farmers’ woes, food shortages and hunger to unsettle, if not topple, governments that fail to ensure an uninterrupted agrochemicals and food supplies even during crises. The fate of the SLFP-led United Front (UF) government in the 1970s is a case in point.
The early 1970s saw a severe world grain shortage. A run of poor harvests in the food producing regions, and a rising demand left many countries with no alternative but to adopt stringent measures to face the situation. An oil crisis in the early 1970s drove up the cost of fuel, fertilisers, and transport, increasing the cost of food production and distribution. Low global grain reserves aggravated the situation, and Sri Lanka was among the worst hit. Reeling from the food crisis, with food import bills increasing, the countries in the Global North scrambled to obtain supplies and remained focused on increasing domestic agricultural production, food security planning and seeking international cooperation to maintain buffer stocks. They had to ration some imported food items that were in short supply.
The UF government became hugely unpopular due to the extreme measures it adopted to curtail hoarding and increase domestic food production through import restrictions. It suffered a humiliating defeat in the 1977 general election. One may recall that the reduction of rice subsidy almost brought down a UNP government in 1953. Sri Lanka was experiencing the ill-effects of a severe grain shortage in Asia in the early 1950s. It was among the former colonies that had prioritised cash crops over subsistence farming and found rice production insufficient for rapidly growing populations. But those who were opposing the then UNP government’s decision to curtail the rice subsidy and increase rice prices ignored the aforementioned aspects of the problem, and organised public protests, triggering the 1953 hartal, which resulted in several deaths of protesters and the resignation of Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake. The then Opposition effectively harnessed public anger against that beleaguered government to engineer a regime change.
Sri Lankans tend to expect their governments to act as beneficent agencies. This mindset has arisen from decades of patronage-based politics, promoted by political parties, including the JVP. So, it is therefore only natural that when a government fails to deliver even during crises, it faces public anger.
If the current fertiliser shortage persists, it could lead to an ironical turn of events, with the farming community having to adopt biological soil amendments, such as compost, farmyard manure, etc., as they did during the Gotabaya Rajapaksa presidency for want of a better alternative. Gotabaya’s ill-planned organic farming experiment created a situation where the JVP was at the forefront of farmers’ protests, demanding fertilisers. Some JVP seniors were seen clutching clumps of withering paddy seedlings and urging the SLPP government to make fertilisers available. They made the most of farmers’ resentment and gained a turbo boost for their political campaigns to win elections. Today, the boot is on the other foot.