Fake pesticides, fertilisers swamp market; agri officials step up vigil in Punjab

Ruchika M Khanna

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, August 17

The agriculture department has stepped up vigil to weed out spurious and adulterated pesticides and fertilisers sneaking into the market.

lure of Low price

“Many farmers living in border villages go to neighbouring states to buy spurious ‘cartap hydrochloride’ as it is available there at Rs30-35/kg against retail price of Rs100-105/kg in Punjab,” says Gokal Parkash Gupta, a pesticide dealer in Dhanaula

From regular search and seizure operations to raids on these pesticide-laden trucks slyly entering villages at night from across the state’s borders, the government is going all out after the miscreants. This “heightened vigil” during the paddy and cotton season has started yielding positive results. A raid on an unscrupulous dealer in Mohali recently led agriculture “sleuths” to tonnes of pesticide with zero percentage of zinc against a specified 33 per cent, while in another raid at Moga, they found a cache of pesticides with negligible minerals.

In all border districts, the department has put its teams on “alert” against trucks entering villages in the wee hours and selling fake/spurious pesticides and /or insecticides bearing the names of reputed multinational pesticide manufacturing companies. Farmers are reportedly buying these as these are cheaper, thinking that retail costs have been cut and not realising that the chemicals sold to them are spurious and mostly fake.

Sources in the agriculture department and in the pesticide trade say mostly spurious or highly adulterated “cartap hydrochloride” is being sold in villages.

Fertiliser samples collected by officials last month, bearing the brand name of three reputed manufacturers, failed random quality tests.

“Following this, orders were issued to all district chief agriculture officers to go in for a wider sampling of these fertilisers. We will also go in for a re-test of the samples even as investigation is under way whether these fertilisers were actually sold by the company or some unscrupulous elements are (mis)using their brand name,” Baldev Singh, Joint Director, Agriculture, told The Tribune.

Director Agriculture Sukhdev Singh Sidhu said the department had adopted a “zero tolerance” to spurious pesticides and routine sampling and search operations were being conducted.