Faridkot
If you are a small or marginal farmer, you may not survive long under the present circumstances.
If you want to buy DAP(Di-Amonium Phosphate) with 18:49(Nitrogen 18 percent and Phosphorus 46 per cent), the most important fertilizer to be drilled at least 55 kg per bag while sowing wheat, it is not easily available.
Thye department advises the farmers to use other alternatives, such as 12:32:16, which has 12 percent Nitrogen,32 per cent Phosphorus and 12 per cent potash. The department recommends that the farmers can use 75 kg of NPK to replace DAP.
But a bag of DAP costs Rs 1350 while one bag of NPK costs 1250, using 75 kg means 1875. 23 kg Potash comes unnecessarily with it. The PAU recommends that Potash can only be used when there is deficiency of it after getting the soil tested.
Potash is already higher in most of the fields. What would be the effect of the much higher Potash in soil? Can not be sad because some nutrients which are given in excess badly affects the uptake of others to the plants.
Then comes Phosphorus alone (triple phosphate)46 per cent at Rs 1250. But it is minus Nitrogen 18 percent. It means the farmers have to apply about 25 kg of Urea to compensate it additionally costing another Rs 135, plus Nano.
Apart from it, the department recommends triple superphosphate 150 kh which usually comes at Rs 1500 and additionally 25 kg of urea would have to be used,costing around Rs 1650. But do not think that all other alternatives are also available in the market.
I wanted to buy 7 bags of DAP for months, but they were not available at all. Then I managed to borrow 2 bags of DAP from a relative through cooperative society and had to buy another 5 through a relative. With those 5 bags of DAP, I was given 10 bottles of Nano Urea and DAP this way cost me around Rs 1850.
As per the research of the PAU, Nano urea has led to a 20 per cent decline in yield and even it further led to a decline of about 20 percent of Protein in the food grains. So far,PAU has not recommended Nano Urea or Nano DAP.
Then I bought 15 bags of Urea from Kotkapura. 6 bottles of Nano came along those. Now I have at least 20 bottles of Nano Urea for spraying about 20 acres,triple than my requirements.
The department of agriculture repeatedly asks farmers to complain about it. But does nothing in itself.Even Punjab government does not seem to be doing anything at all.
Such material is sold without mentioning it in bills. If a farmer would complain against it, he would be refused to sell anything. There are few fertilizer dealers in the markets and they recognize the farmers who make trouble with them.
Besides, they say that it comes to them from the company and if you want to buy it, buy otherwise go.Where would small and marginal farmers go?
Big farmers allegedly get trucks of fertilizers unloaded at their houses and dealers and such farmers sell it to the selective ones.
The Agriculture department and government have just woken up to the shortage of DAP while it is not there for months.
We can not expect that all other alternatives are available in the required amount.
This is the plight of most of the farmers who are sitting in the grain market to sell paddy, waiting for DAP and other fertilizers.
Unless PAU does not recommend the use of Nano Urea, at least the government must intervene.