Center urged to make fertilizers affordable

Andhra Pradesh Agriculture Mission vice chairman MVS Nagi Reddy urged the center to provide all kinds of fertilizers at affordable prices in the interests of the country’s food security.

Addressing reporters here, Nagi Reddy, who is also president of the Farmers Wing of the YSR Congress Party, said that given the ever-increasing prices of agricultural inputs, including fertilizers, it is becoming increasingly difficult for farmers to farm for hand as well as the lack of a compensation price their products on the other hand.

“It is unfortunate that prices for almost all crops are falling even below the Center’s Minimum Support Price (MSP), which has remained a silent bystander to the unfair practices of large agricultural marketing companies,” said Nagi Reddy.

Decontrolling the prices of fertilizers other than urea had been a blow to farmers, he said, adding that fertilizer companies had only agreed to sell only the old stocks at low prices.

After Diesel, fertilizer prices are taking a toll on farmers as companies raise prices after a sharp surge in global commodity prices by over 45%, he lamented.

He said the centre’s instruction to fertilizer companies not to raise the maximum retail price (MRP) for non-urea fertilizers probably wouldn’t bring farmers much relief as it wasn’t the farming season.

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