Getting fertilisers at subsidised prices has become a dream for farmers in the four districts of the Faisalabad division. While self-imposed rates of urea and Diammonium Phosphate (DAP) fertilisers have been fixed, black marketing has also reached its peak. There have been fears of a significant decrease in production if the crops receive less than the required amount of fertiliser. The district administration and agriculture department officers of all four districts have kept silent.
The Punjab government has fixed the official price of urea fertiliser at Rs1980 per bag, while the official price of DAP is fixed at Rs5,800. But taking advantage of the non-availability of agricultural fertilisers at official prices, self-imposed prices were being charged by profiteers and influential dealers. Farmers in all four districts of the division — Faisalabad, Toba Tek Singh, Jhang and Chiniot — were running pillar to post to get fertilisers at fixed prices, but that had remained a distant dream.
Fertilisers are being sold on the black market by profiteers; at this time, the price of a bag of urea fertiliser is Rs3,200, whereas the price of DAP fertiliser has exceeded Rs12,000. It will be impossible for farmers to purchase fertilisers at such high prices, due to which the production of crops had been adversely affected.
In this regard, agricultural experts said that last year due to scarcity of fertiliser at the official price in the market, small farmers were unable to buy fertiliser. This led to fears of a severe negative impact on wheat production. In 2021, the production of wheat crop per acre was 45 to 50 maunds, but this year due to high prices of fertilisers, the production of wheat per acre will be reduced to half of that.
In this regard, farmers said that other crops — including wheat, cotton, sugarcane, rice and sesame — were in dire need of agricultural fertilisers. “If agricultural fertilisers are not used at the right time and in the required quantity, we’ll have to face huge financial losses,” they said.
It is pertinent to mention that special teams had been formed by the district authorities and the agriculture department to sell urea and DAP fertilisers at fixed prices. However, these teams were limited to paperwork only, as the practice of illegal profiteering and hoarding continued in the sale of fertilisers in markets. In this regard, an agriculture department official said that the sale of fertilisers in black would not be allowed.
