No risk of fertiliser shortage till December: Agriculture secretary
“We have allocated Tk193 crore so far to help farmers, which will be used for agricultural rehabilitation in several phases,” he says
The country has enough stock of urea and non-urea fertilisers to meet the demand till December, Ministry of Agriculture Secretary Mohammad Emdad Ullah Mian said today (8 September).
"With the current stock of fertilisers, the demand can be met till December. However, there are still some problems in opening LCs for fertiliser import, which we are consistently working to solve," the secretary said during a discussion with the journalists of Bangladesh Agriculture Reporters Forum (BARF) at the ministry.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture, there are currently 4.61 lakh tonnes of urea fertiliser, 3.22 lakh tonnes of TSP fertiliser, 3.57 lakh tonnes of DAP fertiliser and 4.37 lakh tonnes of MOP fertiliser in the country.
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The secretary also said the process of providing incentives to the farmers affected by the recent flood is underway.
"We have allocated Tk193 crore so far to help farmers, which will be used for agricultural rehabilitation in several phases," Emdad said.
Under the rehabilitation programme, 80,000 small and marginal farmers of nine districts will be given seeds of Ropa Aman, 10 kg of fertilisers and Tk1,000 through mobile banking for cultivating one bigha of land each, said the secretary.
In addition, 1.5 lakh farmers in 22 districts will be given seeds of different varieties of vegetables and Tk1,000 for early winter vegetable cultivation in the homesteads, he added.
According to data from the Ministry of Agriculture, 14,14,089 farmers have been affected by flood from 16 August to 30 August. A total of 3,72,733 hectares of land has been damaged, and about 10 lakh tonnes of paddy, vegetables and fruits worth Tk3,346 crore have been lost due to the flood.
