HYDERABAD: The Sindh Abadgar Ittehad (SAI) has expressed its grave concern over the present state of the agriculture sector, which is backbone of the national economy, and said rising cost of input has undermined it. It said recovery of fuel price adjustment (FPA) on the already paid electricity bills from growers is unjust.

SAI president Nawab Zubair Talpur and other office-bearers including Mohammad Anwar, Mir Zafarullah, Mohib Marri and Saifullah Gill told a joint press conference here on Monday that the organisation’s executive committee held its meeting earlier in the day and express its grave concern over state of the agriculture sector.

Mr Talpur said that the cost of agriculture input had increased manifold which had undermined this sector. He said that FPA of May was going to be recovered from growers in July’s bills at a rate of Rs9.30 per unit and it was learnt that FPA for the month of June would also be recovered in August bills. He said growers would resist this unjust recovery. He noted that the per unit tariff now stood at Rs24-Rs25.

With the differential of FPA, growers would now be receiving Rs100,000 per month bill against their actual bill of Rs25,000. He said they were already bearing highly expensive diesel and the manifold electricity tariff would make farming unaffordable. “The urea cost is skyrocketing; it is available at Rs2,700 per bag while Nitro Phosphate cost stood at Rs8,200 per bag,” he pointed out, saying that these were essential inputs.

Call for declaring all rain-affected districts ‘calamity-hit’

The SAI leaders were of the view that cultivation of crops had now become unviable which was evident from the fact that DAP’s cost stood at Rs15,000 per bag against its actual price of Rs9,700. They said DAP had always been imported and only urea was produced locally. They said last year it was sold at Rs5,600 per bag. Oil price had registered an unprecedented increase.

They said that in the previous wheat season, government was importing the commodity at Rs4,000 per 40kg and farmers were given Rs2,200 per 40kg as support price. They said that government would bear Rs11bn losses on import of wheat alone. They said farmers would find it hard to grow wheat this year and they might give up its cultivation to switch over to mustard crop.

The SAI leaders demanded that paddy price should be fixed at Rs2,500 and cotton crop at Rs10,000 per 40 kg.

They said that had farmers been given Rs,4,000 as the wheat support price, its production would have increased substantially and government would not have to import wheat today. They said last year’s shortage of urea had affected wheat production.

They said that surplus sugar should be exported, and regretted reports that millers would pay Rs250 per 40kg to sugar cane growers which was fixed last year. They said given present market conditions, the price of Rs500 should be fixed for sugar cane crop.

They said that all those districts that had been affected by rains should be declared calamity-hit areas.

They noted that non-perennial canals were given water supplies on July 12, therefore, these canals should be provided water till Jan 12, 2023 so that growers could take care of their paddy crop.

Published in Dawn, August 2nd, 2022