KAILALI, Nov 6: Chedaram Rana, a farmer from Krishnapur Municipality-9, sows wheat seeds in his farm by the end of October every year. By the beginning of November, the seeds would even start bearing saplings. This year, however, Rana has not even plowed his field.

“If we leave the field fallow for some time after plowing, it will lose its humidity and hence, not be able to bear the crop,” he said, “I could not plow the field due to the scarcity of fertilizers.”

Rana is not the only farmer in the village who has not been able to start sowing seeds due to the scarcity of fertilizers. Most farmers in the village are waiting for fertilizers in order to start plowing their fields.

Bhole Rana of the same village has been visiting various agricultural cooperatives in Dhangadi in order to acquire fertilizers for his field. “It's already late to sow the seeds. But I could not find any fertilizer in Dhangadi, too,” he said. He added that he is worried that the soil in his field has already lost its humidity by now and that the crops will not be good this year.

Hundreds of farmers from the district have been thronging various cooperatives in Dhangadi to buy Diammonium Phosphate, Urea and Potassium fertilizers. The agricultural cooperatives in Dhangadi, however, have their own problems.

Dirgha Singh Bam of Pratappur Rural Cooperative claimed that they have been trying to buy fertilizers for the last week. “The farmers from the villages are frustrated due to the scarcity of fertilizers,” he said.

The authorities concerned blame this scarcity on the decrease in the supply of fertilizers in the district. “The scarcity arose after fertilizers were not supplied according to our demand,” chief of the regional office of Agricultural Inputs Company Limited, Durga Prasad Pandey said, “We have been repeatedly asking the office in Bhairahawa to provide us the needed fertilizers but they have not been supplying the amount of fertilizers we need.”

 
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