SoapBoxMox

When a government bans synthetic fertilizers overnight, everyone doesn't spontaneously transition to organic farming. They produce famine. Gotabaya Rajapaksa signed the order in April 2021, prohibiting all synthetic agrochemicals across Sri Lanka in one stroke, with zero phase-in period, zero pilot programs, zero economic modeling. Sri Lankan farmers had built their entire production systems around those inputs. Rice yields collapsed by 40% within months. Tea output, the country's primary export earner, cratered. A nation that had fed itself for decades suddenly scrambled to import rice it once grew in abundance. The government compounded this by years of reckless tax cuts that slashed state revenue without cutting state spending. This produces deficits, not prosperity. Foreign reserves evaporated. Sri Lanka defaulted on $51 billion in external debt in April 2022, its first sovereign default since independence. Fuel shipments stopped because the government had no foreign currency to pay for them. Queues stretched for miles. Hospitals ran out of medicine. Rajapaksa's organic mandate was central planning with a green label, and it produced exactly what central planning always produces: shortages followed by hunger. By July 2022, protesters stormed the Presidential Palace in Colombo and swam in his pool. Rajapaksa fled to the Maldives. The entire population paid the bill for his idiotic green ideology.