National secretary of the Board of Trustees of Maize Association of Nigeria, Israel Amanze, has raised the alarm that adulterated fertiliser has flooded the country.
Amanze made the assertion yesterday while speaking to LEADERSHIP Weekend in Umuahia, the Abia State capital, blaming the adulteration on marketers.
The adviser to the deputy speaker of the House of Representatives, Ben Kalu, on agriculture further noted that this is one of the things contributing to food insecurity in the country.
He explained that the act is not by the producers or the local sellers but marketers who compromise the contents of the item to maximise profit at the expense of end-users.
“When they buy original fertiliser, they take inert or filler materials like limestone and other things and add to it. It will still help the crop do a little well, but that will not be the correct thing.
“The farmer will be expecting a bumper harvest but will end up finding out that what he had applied is not the correct thing. So where it should give up to 100 percent increase in yield it might give 20 or 10 percent,” he said.
Amanze added that the ultimate thing is chemical analysis, laboratory analysis of the components of the fertiliser.
He added, “But that one is not very easy for everybody and it is not affordable. People who have been farming for a long time can look at the fertiliser and discern the properties, the various elements, nutrients, compounds that make up the fertiliser. It only takes expertise to be able to know exactly which fertiliser is real.
“Therefore it may not be very easy for a local farmer to know exactly the fertiliser that is adulterated or not, except he is fully experienced because experienced farmers can always find out.”
On the availability of the item, the adviser shared that it had not been very difficult, but that it had been very difficult in the area of pricing and cost.
