HYDERABAD: The Sindh Abadgar Board has urged federal and provincial governments to ensure fertiliser is available to farmers for wheat cultivation.

He cautioned that if hike in the prices of farm inputs continues they will increasingly find it hard to use the fertiliser altogether, which may in turn shrink per acre yield and lead to food insecurity.

SAB office-bearers at a joint news conference in the local press club on Tuesday said that growers in Sindh had paid Rs130 billion over and above the actual price of fertiliser to dealers. Urea was being black-marketed and was not available in market at official price, leading to price hike, they said.

SAB president Mahmood Nawaz Shah said that if the price hike continued growers would find it hard to use farm inputs like fertiliser. This would compromise per acre yield and cause food insecurity, he said.

Shortage, hike in urea price affecting yield, causing food insecurity, says growers’ body

He said that fertiliser was not available at official price of Rs3,600 a bag and its cost had increased over three to four months to Rs5,200. A bag of DAP fertiliser was being sold for Rs14,500 against actual cost of Rs13,000 and if the farm inputs were not used in time they would be of no use later, he said.

He said that it was high time the government played its role to ensure availability of urea fertiliser at official price. Flour price was skyrocketing as it was being sold at Rs160 per kilo against official rate of Rs100 per kg, he said.

SAB general secretary Dr Zulfikar Yusufani said that the dealers had raised price of a bag of urea by Rs1,500 in one go. There were ghost dealers who should be checked by the government, he said.

SAB vice president Syed Nadeem Shah said that a check-post set up at Sindh-Punjab border was not allowing fertiliser to enter Sindh even though there was no interprovincial ban on the movement of urea fertiliser. It was in turn contributing to price hike of the farm input, he said.

He believed the recent administrative action with regard to supply of urea had also backfired.

Published in Dawn, December 6th, 2023