Kanchanpur, July 13: Shortage of fertilizers has gripped Kanchanpur district during the peak rice planting time. The farmers are compelled to buy substandard Indian fertilizer at an exorbitant price due to the shortage of the fertilizer supplied by the Agriculture Inputs Corporation at a subsidized rate.
It is said the Corporation’s branch office at Bhimdattanagar has not been able to meet the high demand for the subsidized fertilizer. Manoj Chaudhari, a farmer of local Shuklaphanta municipality-2 said that he had to go to the nearest market in India and buy DAP fertilizer as he could not get the subsidized fertilizer supplied by the Corporation.
The Corporation’s district office stated that it supplied 1,443 metric tonnes of DAP, one thousand 803 metric tonnes of urea and 35,750 metric tonnes of potash this year. Officiating chief of the office, Bal Bahadur Shah said they already ran out of stock of this quantity of fertilizer by the third week of May itself.
“Although we had planned to supply additional 2,000 metric tonnes of DAP, 2500 metric tonnes of urea and 70 metric tonnes of potash, we could not do so because the long delay in its purchase and problem in transportation,” he said. Shah said they are preparing to bring 600 metric tonnes urea from the Corporation’s depot at Bhairahawa, out of which 459 metric tonnes is already supplied. RSS