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TIRUCHY: Farmers in the district are facing a crisis due to the unaffordable fertilizer prices and the samba yield is likely to go down this season, as most of them have decided to use less or no fertilizers. The samba cultivation had began during the last week of September and the monsoon too had raised hopes of a good harvest. The targeted area of cultivation this year is will be 62,000 hectare, including the 26,000 hectare this year.However, samba cultivation had been taken up only on about 40,000 hectare so far and the SRI method only on about 20,000 hectare, since the farmers were unable to buy fertilizers the prices of which were not affordable to them. Even those farmers who had began cultivation are worried about the yield due to the doubling of fertilizer cost and the shortage in supply.The demand for diammonium phosphate (DAP) fertilizer was around 2836 tonne, while 1400 tonne MOP (Potash) was in demand and 1300 NPK fertilizer in the district.Though officials say that there was adequate stock of fertilizer, the Primary Agriculture Cooperative Banks were not keeping enough stock of fertilizers to meet the demand. The farmers also charge that from Oct 1, the price of DAP has been increased from Rs 458 to Rs 958 per bag. “As the price has increased to more than 187 per cent that last year and there is no supply of potash, the farmers are facing an acute crisis and many of them had stopped planting the seeds”, Puliyur Nagarajan, State Vice president of Tamil Nadu Congress (Farmers wing) said.J Sekar, Joint Director (Agri) denied the charges of shortage in the supply of fertilizer. He said “so far, 1420 tonne DAP has been supplied this month and 1234 tonne is being stocked for further distribution.
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