How pesticide bans are represented in the media – exploring Sri Lanka’s 2021 import ban

Lisa Schölin and Manjula Weerasinghe examine how Sri Lanka’s 2021 pesticide import ban was portrayed in local newspapers, discussing the media’s role in shaping public attitudes towards pesticide bans.


Person reading newspaper

The 2021 ban – a swift change in law that didn’t last

In 2021, the world started to pick up on something happening in Sri Lanka. The country, which had entered a significant financial crisis, was reporting food shortages following a ban on the import of fertilisers and pesticides.

The decision to introduce the ban had been sudden – implemented only nine days after it was announced. It is therefore no surprise that it had a major impact on farmers, who were forced to adopt organic farming practices without any preparation time.

This ban did not last long – only six months later it had been revoked. The Centre for Pesticide Suicide Prevention has previously written about the ban and how its failure should not overshadow the success of Sri Lanka’s earlier bans on highly hazardous pesticides, which were pivotal for driving down its extraordinarily high suicide rate.

Unpicking media ‘framing’ of the ban

While other studies may focus on the economic and agricultural impact of the ban, and why it failed, we were particularly interested in how the ban was ‘framed’ by media in Sri Lanka at the time.

Was it portrayed positively or negatively? Which aspects were given more or less importance? How did the media try to influence public opinion, either by building support for or opposition to the ban?

Understanding this could help future policy making around pesticides. We already know that pesticide bans, when carefully considered and properly implemented, can bring benefits to both health and the environment. However, public attitudes towards bans (and the role of media in shaping these) could be an important factor.

To explore this, we analysed all newspaper articles specifically talking about the pesticide import ban in Sri Lanka. We asked three questions of each article: what is the problem, what are the causes and consequences of the problem, and what are the proposed solutions?

Our findings

Our study showed that most of the articles were supportive of the ban and presented the issue using ‘frames’ that sought to persuade the reader that this was a good thing. This is perhaps surprising, given how it was described in foreign media as a “disaster”.

No consistent reason behind the ban was however presented; some emphasised the importance of moving toward organic farming as a wider agricultural and environmental goal while only a few articles suggested the decision was political and motivated by the financial crisis.

Articles supportive if the ban mainly talked about how pesticides have a negative impact on human health and that organic farming is better for environment and health. On the other hand, newspapers that were opposed to the ban discussed topics, such as negative impact on farmer and industry livelihoods, and the pesticide market.

In very few articles, however, farmers were interviewed and asked about the impact of the ban on their practices and livelihoods. These voices, therefore, were mainly silent within the media framing of this issue despite being a key group who would be impacted by the decision.

Shaping public opinion

Our study is just one piece in a bigger puzzle to understand the impact of this pesticide ban. Media can play an important role in shaping public opinion, as shown by other policies that have been studied from a ‘framing’ perspective.

For example, mass media was used in Scotland to create opposition to a minimum price on alcohol. In Canada, a study showed how the ‘framings’ used in the media around illicit tobacco was favourable to the interests of the tobacco industry. In the USA, one study went a step further and looked at how pesticide policy was framed in media. Its findings suggested this had an impact, as the regulator banned the use of pesticides on some crops following media coverage focused on risks and outcomes of pesticide use.

Since our study showed that the ban was mainly framed in favourable terms, future work needs to explore how this was actually perceived by farmers and community members impacted by the ban.

Learning lessons

Pesticide bans, specifically of highly hazardous pesticides that are implicated in many cases of intentional poisoning, are cost-effective interventions to save lives. But how these bans are introduced matters – quickly banning products that farmers rely on without suitable alternatives create a lot of challenges for food production.

The portrayal of policy decisions in the news is one important part of understanding how support might be developed in support or opposition, though in Sri Lanka’s case this was after the fact. We’re still learning from these events, and it will serve to inform policy making around pesticides in other countries in years to come.

Full findings from the study are published in PLOS Global Public Health.


Lisa Scholin, Centre for Pesticide Suicide Prevention

Lisa Schölin
Research Fellow, Centre for Pesticide Suicide Prevention (CPSP)

Lisa is a public health researcher with interest in prevention of substance-related harm and the relation between policy and health behaviour.


Dr. Manjula Weerasinghe

Dr Manjula Weerasinghe
Postdoctoral Fellow, Rajarata University

Manjula has more than 10 years experience working on pesticide suicide prevention studies in North central Province of Sri Lanka.