FERTILISER usage is declining taking farming gradually down with it and exposing the country to severe food insecurity. The trend continues unabated.

It is largely because the cartels involved in fertiliser trade are too powerful to be checked by a week administrative machinery.

The latest figures show that the usage of di-ammonium phosphate (DAP) has dropped drastically by 73 per cent. Add around 17 per cent of drop in urea consumption during the current Kharif season, and the overall agricultural scenario gets bleak.

Both DAP and urea share over 85 per cent (urea 68 per cent and DAP 17.5 per cent) of the national consumption.

Without optimum use of DAP, the agriculture targets set for the year would be simply not possible. Its usage is a must for the robust growth of plant, root elongation, strength and fruiting. Urea is responsible for vegetative growth of plant. Without proper usage of both these fertilisers, all crops would miss production targets for the second year running, putting further pressure on food security and import bill.

Unfortunately, these declining figures have failed to move officials into correcting aberrations of fertiliser trade, which include absence of cushion between world and domestic prices, cartelisation of manufacturers, importers and traders, hoarders and stockists and overlapping federal and provincial jurisdictions over the trade.

These factors have rigged fertiliser trade against the farmers. Neither the previous nor the present government has tried to retrieve the situation. The Shaukat Aziz government rather let the problem fester. According to some analysts, he helped the formation of these cartels and then fostered them throughout his five years stint. The result is that fertiliser trade suffers from supply and price pressure and the farmers are not ready to purchase it because of the rising price almost on weekly basis.

With the rising prices of fertiliser and its declining consumption, it would be almost impossible for the government to achieve the Kharif crop target of 14.1 million bales of cotton, six million tons of rice and 50 million tons of sugarcane. If these targets are missed, exports would suffer badly because over 70 per cent export (textile and rice) depends on Kharif crops.

The government fixes new increased crop targets every year, without taking necessary steps to ensure them. The availability of fertiliser at an affordable price is essential. No one from the official side is ready to divulge how they plan to achieve these targets without optimum use of fertiliser from a soil on which cropping intensity has already hit 180 per cent. Depleting water supplies, bad seeds and non-existent farm mechanisation are major impediments.

With official agriculture managers and many in the private sector working on cross purposes, the farming sector has taken a hit like never before. Given the receding writ of government, the hoarders are dominating fertiliser trade Even the semi-government agencies like the Fauji Fertiliser Corporation (FFC) are minting money. Of total production of 27 million bags, eight millions are produced locally and 19 million are imported. Interestingly, the local manufacturers are also allowed to sell locally produced DAP at the international price.

The government does not take effective measures against the fertiliser hoarders. In Punjab, the government took administrative actions against farmers and middle-men to recover wheat in the recent procurement drive, banned wheat movement in spite of it being unconstitutional, but has let the fertiliser hoarders and stockists go scot free.

The fertiliser hoarders’ capacity could be gauged from the fact that during one such raid at Lodhran (Punjab), the DCO recovered 200,000 bags of urea from one stockist. The raid was conducted after a media campaign that urea has disappeared from the market at the most critical time of its consumption during the Kharif season. If one hoarder could hold 200,000 bags, almost the entire consumption of a tehsil, one can imagine how much rigging capacity these hoarders have.

The subsidy money on fertiliser has also only helped make the situation worse. In the absence of a credible mechanism to calculate fertiliser off-take every month, the manufacturers and importers are paid on whatever stocks they declare. These stockists and importers get subsidy on their entire stocks either during October and November or June-July, four months of maximum consumption, depending on the timing of their import. Since they take subsidy money in advance, they have no interest in on time import or selling it on market rates. The practice is going on unabated for the last three years. The only thing the government has done is to increase subsidy money under pressure from the cartels.

Interestingly, the federal government decides timing and quantity of fertiliser import and all rules of its trade whereas agriculture, according to the constitution, is a provincial subject. It is the federal government that fixes crop targets, without creating necessary wherewithal and the provinces are supposed to ensure the targets. The provincial governments are almost helpless against these cartels as they operate at national level and can shift their stocks even if one of the federating units decides, though no one has dared it yet, to go after them.

Leaving fertiliser trade at the mercy of inefficient markets, and cartels with no regulatory mechanism, hardly makes in a food –deficient country like Pakistan.