Alexis Heather

Project

Impacts of national agrochemical ban in Sri Lanka: exploring variability in small-scale farmer responses and landscape-level rice productivity

In 2021 Sri Lanka became the first country to attempt to transition its agriculture sector to 100% organic practices, following a Governmental ban on the importation of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and weedicides. It did not go as planned.

In the growing season following the ban, rice yields plummeted over 30% across Sri Lanka, cratering farmer incomes and setting off a food security crisis. Though the ban on synthetic agrochemicals was rescinded after about six months, many Sri Lankan rice farmers have yet to fully recover their yields, Government of Sri Lanka data shows that average rice yields were about 14% below their pre-ban levels in the 2023/24 main growing season (the most recent available data). Leveraging UC Davis resources, JASTRO grant funding and international collaboration with the University of Peradeniya and the International Rice Research Institute, UC Davis International Agricultural Development (IAD) Graduate Student Alexis Heather has developed a multi-method project to explore how local rice farmer’s practices and perceptions may have influenced post-ban yield recovery for his IAD thesis.

Alexis’s IAD project utilizes remote-sensing, economic analysis and in-field surveys to understand the effects of the organic mandate on rice growers and how farmer practices may have influenced local yield recovery. To determine locations where rice yield recovery rates diverged, Alexis identified and cataloged rice framing areas in the Anuradhapura District with indicators of high versus low yield recovery represented in remote sensing crop health indices and district-level rice yield data. Alexis then spent four weeks in Sri Lanka, conducting surveys of rice farmers and collaborating with industry stakeholders to better understand farmer adaptation strategies and support networks. Analysis comparing reported farmer practices/outcomes with remote-sensing indicators is currently underway. Alexis hopes that findings from his project will help farmers and policy makers better understand the impacts of system wide agricultural transitions and inform the development of a more sustainable agricultural industry.

Background

Originally hailing from the island of Guam, I have built my life and career around a fundamental lesson from my island home: the world is finite and we are all interconnected through the scarcity of its resources. Exploring the implications of this lesson led me to study International Economics at Hendrix College and dedicate my career to creating a more sustainable agro-ecological system. After graduating I joined the Peace Corps and served as a Agricultural Development Volunteer in Ghana, where my projects focused on agricultural capacity building (subsistence farming, cashew agroforestry), secondary income generation (beekeeping, mushroom cultivation), local microfinance, water and sanitation, and communication/outreach for development. After my two years as a Volunteer, I joined the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service, designing and implementing sanitary and phytosanitary development programs - which aim to assess and mitigate risks to animal health, plant health and food safety - in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Pakistan, Ukraine and Georgia. I believe that our food systems are the foundational interaction between human society and the surrounding ecosystems, and that building a sustainable system of human-food-environmental stewardship is one of the preeminent challenges of our time.