Haryana looking into complaints of adulterated farm inputs

C R Rathee

Ambala: Following complaints of large-scale sale adulterated inputs, particularly chemical fertilisers and pesticides, resulting in heavy loss to farmers in Haryana, state agriculture minister, Jaswinder Singh Sandhu, has directed field functionaries of his department as also those of Chaudhary Charan Singh Haryana Agriculture University to collect samples of seeds, fertilisers and pesticides from all the shops retailing these and test them in government-approved private labs.

Analysing the causes as to why the recommended dosages of chemical fertilisers are not yielding the expected results, and why frequent spraying of recommended pesticides fail to check the spread of plant diseases, the minister suspected that inspectors responsible for collecting input samples for lab tests, in several cases, were hand-in-glove with the retailers.

During his recent incognito visit to some districts, Mr Sandhu was reportedly informed that field functionaries of his department collected the same number of samples of seeds, chemical fertilisers and pesticides often from the same shops. The samples, it was alleged, were not immediately sent to the labs, thus allowing time for the dealers to manoeuvre the results in their favour.

Mr Sandhu told The Financial Express that last year and this year, both during the kharif and rabi seasons, the agricultural staff collected 1,260 samples of seeds of kharif crop and 2,090 of rabi crop. Similarly, during 1999-2000 and during the current fisc, month-wise and district-wise, the same number of samples of fertilisers and pesticides were collected from almost the same dealers and the samples were sent for testing to the same labs.

While the farmers complained of having sprayed three to four times more of the recommended pesticides, not a single sample of any input has been officially recorded as having failed the test. This naturally led some of them to suspect some sort of nexus between agricultural inspectors and input dealers, as also apathy on the part of deputy directors in-charge of the farm operations. “I even suspect the collusion of some unscrupulous elements even at the headquarter, which is over-staffed by all kinds of senior and junior specialists,” the minister added.