Farmers in queues for fertilizer becomes common sight in Telangana

Majority of ryots leaving primary agricultural cooperatives societies without urea as adequate stock not supplied

KARIMNAGAR: The old sight of footwear and pattadar passbooks placed in queue lines in front of fertilizer shops has become quite frequent in rural areas of the State in the recent past. The sight was not seen in the State for most part of the 10 years of the BRS regime.

Farmers are placing footwear and passbooks in front of primary agricultural cooperatives societies (PACS) and are waiting for hours in queue lines for their turn.

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However, a majority of ryots are leaving the societies without fertilizer as adequate urea has not been supplied. While Agriculture Department officials claim there was no shortage of urea and that adequate stocks were available, farmers are fighting for the same across the State.

Usually, agriculture officials prepare estimates of fertilizer requirement when crop sowing estimations are prepared and send the indent to the government for urea, potash and complex and other fertilizers.

It was estimated that 42,416 metric tonnes of urea was required for Karimnagar district and month-wise requirement details were also sent to the government. Of that 38,255 metric tonnes was already distributed while 1,534 tonnes was available with dealers.

Every day, 1,500 metric tonnes of urea has been brought from other districts to meet the demand during the last few days, according to the District Agriculture Officer Bhagyalaxmi.

Though there are different reasons, abnormal weather conditions are said to be one of the reasons for spurt in demand for urea.

Urea plays a vital role in the growth of paddy, which was sowed in a larger extent of 2.40 lakh acres in the district in the present season. Adequate growth was not there in the crop sowed in the beginning of the season. Cold weather conditions were also said to be the main reason for slow growth of the crop. Worried over the situation, farmers started spilling additional urea. If one bag of urea is enough for an acre of paddy, farmers are using one more bag additionally. For this purpose, ryots were procuring additional bags of urea which has triggered the shortage, agriculture officials claimed.

Speaking to ‘Telangana Today’, a farmer Rajamallaiah from Gopalpur of Karimnagar rural mandal said that initially, they had faced problems for urea in their mandal. After repeated representations to officials, adequate urea was supplied. Still, there was a problem in other areas, he said.