"Mainstream media" means that someone is trying to spread doubt, and knows very little from audited sources. It's an extreme red flag
Always repeated, never justified. Too low for what, exactly? Not too low to feed Sri Lankans. Maybe too low for that and also as much of export crops as had been needed to pay to import massive amounts of fertilizer and pesticide.
Importing food would be a much better use of foreign-trade money than importing pesticides.
Government amassed huge amounts of debt in foreign currency for dubious projects. The forced switch to organic farming was a desperate measure to avoid loosing foreign currency and for sure didn't help but it was not the cause. This wasn't an planned movement to organic farming. They just couldn't pay for fertilizer.
Also pretty crazy that IMF still sings the same song: privatize your most important assets and reduce the public sector to create even more jobless people. Why just why do countries ask Putin and China for credit?
Not that they are any better: Also lot's of debt from China for white elephant infrastructure projects - which is a know strategy from them. So they couldn't pay and now China controls the port in Sri Lanka.
But we already knew from the byline.
But it was obviously really just massive government incompetence. It has been known for decades how to transition to organic methods successfully: incrementally, and with education. Both skipped.
After a sensible transition, yields could be lower, per acre, but not necessarily. Money spent on fertilizer and pesticides would be much lower than that. Money previously sent abroad would have stayed in Sri Lanka, milling around in the local economy generating prosperity.
Now they have chaos, and it will take a long time to get back to their previous, precarious state, probably in hock to China. Dow and BASF will get themselves well locked in; other countries will be spooked. A big success, for them. Not so for Sri Lankans.