Jaipur: Farmers Saturday urged agriculture department and its minister Kirori Lal Meena to address large-scale sale of fake and substandard seeds in the market. The move comes after Meena made surprise inspections at several factories producing spurious fertilisers in the last two days. Farmers said that there is no mechanism to act against traders selling poor quality seeds. The agriculture minister said, “Yes, this too is on my mind. This has been a big problem along with the supply and sale of spurious fertilisers. Let me assure the farmers that I will very soon start a campaign against the fake seeds. I believe supplying fake seeds to the farmers is like killing them since a farmer only knows that seeds are fake after working hard on his farm for almost a month. He feels cheated. I know the pain,” the minister added.Farmers from Banswara, Dungarpur, Sirohi, Sriganganagar and Hanumangarh districts complained that in almost every season of Rabi and Kharif, they are deceived by poor quality seeds.“I bought 10 packets of cucumber seed, each packet costing Rs 6,000. Usually, cucumber comes out in a period of 30 days. But I was deceived as the plant grew, and no cucumber came. I went to the trader who sold it to me, and he paid no heed to my problem. This is a big problem, and I would like the department of agriculture to take up this issue,” said Suresh Chaudhary of Sargoth village near Sikar.Similarly, farmers complained that there are fake seeds of wheat, barley, millets, vegetables and almost every crop. “We plough the farm, put seeds, and work hard on them in the hope of harvesting the crop. However, many times we get cheated. This has been a big problem and neither the police nor any other authority takes action against the makers and sellers of these fake seeds,” said Harnesk Singh of Bhagsar village of Sriganganagar.“I visited the local office of agriculture to complain after I got the fake seeds of mustard, but I got no response. By the time we realise that seeds are fake, the season of a particular crop we sowed got over,” said Khushi Ram Chaudhary, a farmer from Sultana village in Jhunjhunu.
Farmers urge min to act against sale of fake seeds | Jaipur News
