Farmers of Valley are busy readying their fields & Orchards for the Kharif season, thanks to the almighty Allah for gifting this year good winter with moderate snowfall. The threat of substandard seeds, fertilizers and pesticides looms large with no quality check being carried out by the innocent farmers. Substandard and spurious seeds as well as pesticides and fertilisers have invaded the local markets and as a result, large of the stocks available in the valley does not meet the standards fixed by the concerned departments & agencies . No any concrete step has been taken to prevent the use of substandard seeds and fertilizers. There is seriousness of towards this issue. Majority of the agriculture/ horticulture product distributors are private traders, who indulge in black-marketing during the peak seasons. Most of the farmers are forced to buy the fake & substandard products from these private traders due to limited source of income & advance money borrowed from middlemen to meet Kharif expenses.Taking advantage of the farmers, the private traders & these middlemen & capitalists sell fake, illicit and substandard products to them.
The farmers approach these landlords , capitalists for & middlemen for credits due to the negative appraoch of government by not including them in the loan waiver schemes or easing loans for them . The sale of seeds, pesticides and fertilizers is mostly unchecked. These costly pesticides, insecticides and fertilizer are not effective and are causing financial loss to them. The most challenges faced by both farmers & these chemical making companies is presence of Spurious pesticides, fungicides. These chemicals not only pose threats to farm yield, farmers’ health but also have severe economic implications. The Agrochemicals sector has huge unrealized potential for growth, given the presently very low level of application as compared to global norms.
Secondly our innocent farmers have become habitual of excessive spraying of fungicides & pesticides. Spraying of chemicals in excession makes the crops & fruit trees weak. The market is flooded with substandard pesticides & fungicides & farmers usually take advice from Seller and not from the experts or Scientists. The seller always profers to sell the chemicals with huge margin of profit but low standard. Dealer never bothers to save the wealth of farmer i,e Crop or Fruit plant. Farmers should approach nearest Agriculture & Horticulture offices or KVK’s before going for sprays. While as KVK’s, SKUAST branches and concerned departments should establish whatsapp groups of progressive farmers , so that information can reach the farmers with short span of time. Young & qualified farmers be preferred in these groups. These can act as contact & approach farmers. These can be entrepreneurs in the future & best ambassadors of profitable farming.
Another way of curbing these fake substandard pesticides is to stress on organic farming.There are two things that are affecting farmers severely :1) Cost of Agriculture and 2) Yield due different reasons. By putting external inputs , costs of agriculture certainly comes down. With organic farming methods like mulching, using drought resistant native seeds, farmyard manure water stress can be easily managed. To manage better yields , we can put in at various innovative methods and cultivate a wide variety of crops, polyhouses & micro irrigation methods etc. It has been seen in the past, that Organic produce fetches more profit to the farmer. So for not a single farmer doing organic farming has committed suicide in the past four decades. People usually prefer now produce of organic farming as a Health conscious. Department of Agriculture & Horticulture is providing funds for Vormicompost Units & Soil pits. Farmers can approach & take benefits. Home made green manure; FYM, Wastes of Kitchen & domestic waste are taken for use in place of fertilizers, which are prepared by these fake companies.
( The author is a freelancer. Views are his own [email protected])
