Farmers Movement Archive

Forced to buy additional items with urea, allege Hisar farmers

Hisar, January 28Farmers here have alleged that they are being forced to purchase nano urea along with the urea fertiliser bags by authorised fertiliser sale points in the district.Farmers maintained that they were in dire need of urea to sprinkle the rabi crops and, thus, had no option but to purchase the additional nano urea liquid or any other pesticide being offered by the shops.Practice illegalNo condition of tagging additional items can be put up for sale by the sale points of the fertilisers. Dr Vinod Phogat, Dy Director of AgricultureA farmer of Bahbalpur, Jagdish, while showing the receipt of the urea bag purchased from a fertiliser shop in his village yesterday stated that he needed five bags of urea for his rabi crops, but the shop owner forcibly gave him an additional 1 litre nano urea liquid bottle.The shop owner said that I had to either purchase nano urea or another pesticide along with each two bags of the fertilisers. This way, I had to shell out additional Rs 480, costing Rs 240 per bottle, along with five bags of urea, he said. Jagdish had purchased five bags of urea, worth Rs 1,350 (Rs 270 each), for his rabi crops.Shamsher Nambardar, a leader of the Kisan Sabha in Hisar, maintained that the practice of tagging another product along with the urea or DAP bags had been going on in Hisar and other districts for the past several months.“We have taken up the issue with the authorities concerned as there is no condition to tag other items for purchase by the needy farmers,” he said. Nambardar maintained that the farmers had no option but to spend extra money for the purchase of the products even if these were of no use to them.Rajveer Singh, an agriculture official, said he came to know about the incidents of the forcible selling of additional items. “I have talked to the nambardar of the village and also interacted with farmers and there are no complaints of this nature.” #Fertiliser

The Tribune

2022-01-29