Taking note of spurious fertilizers and seed rocket active in the district, Agriculture Minister B.C. Patil directed the officials concerned to keep a vigil on the offenders to ensure that farmers get genuine seed and pesticides.

“If you look at the spurious seed and pesticide transactions last year, as much as 45% of the seeds and fertilizers sold in the district was sub-standard. You should not forget that the vigilance officers had seized the sub-standard or spurious agro-inputs worth ?17 crore last year. I don’t want the reputation this year. The district administration should make all preparations well before the onset of monsoon and put a mechanism in place to check the menace of spurious agro-inputs this year,” Mr. Patil told the officers.

He also directed the officials concerned to keep a watch on the traders who tend to create artificial scarcity of fertilizers, especially the urea, considering the fact that as many as 158 trade licenses were cancelled last year for such offences.

He was speaking at a meeting held at the district administrative complex here on Sunday to review the progress and preparations of his department’s tasks.

When the issue of compensation to the flood-hit farmers was taken up for discussion, the officials told the Minister that crops, mainly red gram, green gram, black gram and soybean on 4,42,686 hectares were destroyed in the floods and a sum of ?97.07 crore was disbursed among 1,39,158 farmers as compensation.

Source: The Hindu