Vì sao Sri Lanka khủng hoảng?

cấm nhập khẩu và sử dụng phân bón, 2 triệu nông dân phải trồng trọt theo phương pháp organic, -> sản lượng gạo giảm 20% chỉ trong 6 tháng đầu năm, tàn phá vụ mùa chè, nguồn thu ngoại tệ của đất nước,

từng tự hào là nước có thu nhập trung bình cao, giờ nửa triệu người dưới mức nghèo khổ,

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Faced with a deepening economic and humanitarian crisis (khủng hoảng), Sri Lanka called off  (hủy bỏ) an ill-conceived (không được suy nghĩ thấu đáo) national experiment (thử nghiệm quy mô toàn quốc) in organic agriculture this winter. Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa promised in his 2019 election campaign (chiến dịch tranh cử) to transition the country’s farmers to organic agriculture over a period of 10 years. Last April, Rajapaksa’s government made good on that promise, imposing (áp đặt) a nationwide ban on the importation (nhập khẩu) and use of synthetic fertilizers (phân bón tổng hợp) and pesticides (thuốc trừ sâu) and ordering the country’s 2 million farmers to go organic.

The result was brutal (hung ác, tàn bạo) and swift (mau, nhanh, lẹ). Against claims that organic methods can produce comparable yields to conventional farming, domestic rice production fell 20 percent in just the first six months. Sri Lanka, long self-sufficient (tự cung tự cấp) in rice production, has been forced to import $450 million worth of rice even as domestic prices for this staple (mặt hàng chính) of the national diet surged by around 50 percent. The ban also devastated (tàn phá) the nation’s tea crop, its primary export (xuất khẩu chính) and source of foreign exchange.

By November 2021, with tea production falling, the government partially lifted its fertilizer ban on key export crops, including tea, rubber, and coconut. Faced with angry protests (biểu tình giận dữ), soaring inflation (lạm phát tăng vọt), and the collapse (sụp đổ) of Sri Lanka’s currency (đồng tiền), the government finally suspended (đình chỉ, hoãn, tạm thời ngưng) the policy for several key crops—including tea, rubber, and coconut—last month, although it continues for some others. The government is also offering $200 million to farmers as direct compensation (đền bù) and an additional $149 million in price subsidies (trợ cấp) to rice farmers who incurred losses. That hardly made up for the damage and suffering the ban produced. Farmers have widely criticized the payments for being massively insufficient (không đủ) and excluding many farmers, most notably tea producers, who offer one of the main sources of employment in rural Sri Lanka. The drop in tea production alone is estimated to result in economic losses of $425 million.

Human costs have been even greater. Prior to the pandemic’s outbreak, the country had proudly achieved upper-middle-income status. Today, half a million people have sunk back into poverty. Soaring inflation and a rapidly depreciating currency have forced Sri Lankans to cut down on food and fuel purchases as prices surge. The country’s economists have called on the government to default on its debt repayments to buy essential supplies for its people.

The farrago (đống lẫn lộn, mớ lộn xộn, món hổ lốn) of magical thinking, technocratic hubris (xấc xược, ngạo mạn, kêu căng láo xược), ideological delusion (ảo tưởng ý thực hệ), self-dealing (tự lợi), and sheer shortsightedness (thiển cận) that produced the crisis in Sri Lanka implicates both the country’s political leadership and advocates of so-called sustainable agriculture: the former for seizing on the organic agriculture pledge as a shortsighted measure to slash fertilizer subsidies and imports and the latter for suggesting that such a transformation of the nation’s agricultural sector could ever possibly succeed.

Bài trước: Hiểu lầm về CNCS nguyên thủy