One-fourth of pesticide samples in open market sub-standard: Bhartiya Krishak Samaj

Nearly one-fourth of pesticides samples sold in open market are substandard and losses on account of use of such spurious products are estimated at Rs 30,000 crore to the farming community, farmers' body Bharatiya Krishak Samaj Monday said.

As per the farmers' body, 13 out of total 50 samples of pesticides sold in open market have been found to be substandard in a test conducted at a government lab.

Bharatiya Krishak Samaj President Krishna Bir Chaudhary alleged that pesticide inspectors and lab analysts at the state level, connive with the manufacturers for sale of such substandard and spurious products.

He called for strict action against them.

"We collected samples of 50 pesticides, of which 23 were bio-pesticides for analysis by NABL Accredited government laboratory - the Institute of Pesticide Formulation Technology, Gurgaon," he told reporters here.

In the test report, four samples of pesticides have been found sub-standard, while nine samples of bio-pesticides failed the test as they contained chemicals, he added.

"Farmers are being cheated by manufacturers of sub-standards and spurious pesticides. Such manufacturers are supplying chemical pesticides in the name of bio-pesticides," Chaudhary said.

He claimed that manufactures of such sub-standard pesticides is earning over Rs 5,000 crore, while the loss to the farmers on account of using the spurious pesticides is estimated to be over Rs 30,000 crore.

Chaudhary said the organisation spent about Rs 5 lakh for drawing these samples from the open market and then testing by the Institute of Pesticide Formulation Technology, which is a NABL approved laboratory under the aegis of Department of Chemicals and Petro-chemicals, Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers.