With the unprecedented shortage of urea farmers are forming serpentine lines before the offices of primary agriculture cooperative societies and also private dealers with a hope of getting at least one bag of fertilizer. They are spending long hours in lines as the time for applying fertilizer to growing paddy crop is passing off quickly. Police are standing guard to ensure that there are no protests.
Unable to stand hours together in queues some farmers are waiting under shade of trees or buildings placing their footwear or land documents in queue. Given the shortfall of the fertilizer the authorities restricted supply to two bags per person. However, the farmers are ready to purchase urea at higher price in the open market provided it is available. Some farmers are rushing to border districts to test their luck.
There is an all of a sudden surge in demand for urea as paddy transplantation has taken place in large tracts due to rains in the current month with the rain playing truant in June and July. Amid the high demand, just 1,700 tonnes of urea arrived in the district on Thursday. Officials faced hard time to distribute it as the PACS were thronged by a large number of farmers, including women farmers.
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The integrated old district requires a total of 1.05 lakh metric tones of urea and by the end of this month Nizamabad needs to get 54,000 tonnes while Kamareddy 32,000 MTs. However, the former got 36,000 MTs with 18,000 mt shortfall while the latter 27,000 MTs with 5,000 MT shortage till Friday. Both the districts are expecting the arrival of three to five rakes of the fertilizer by September 1.
District Agriculture Officer of Kamareddy Nagendraiah said that farmers were making a run for the fertilizer under a misconception that yield would not be high if the fertilizer was not applied at this moment. In fact, it would not affect even if it was used three four days late.
“Therefore we are enlightening the farmers on the use of urea,” he said.
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“We have placed an indent for 6,600 MTs and three rakes from KRIBHCO and IPL would come on September 1. Farmers used urea for maize with the continuous showers earlier in the month leading to shortage. However, maize has grown strong now,” he added.
According to M. Govind, District Agriculture Officer, Nizamabad, the shortage has become a common phenomenon all over the State as there is delay in the sanction from the Centre. Overall, there is a short fall of 2 lakh tones of urea in the State. This situation arose as there were no rains during the last two months and farmers thronged the PACS with the continuous rains in August.
In addition to that, as against the normal of 1.86 lakh acres where paddy is transplanted every year this year farmers sowed paddy in 2.36 lakh acres, he said expressing the hope that the shortage could be met with in next couple of days.