JAMMU: Controller Fertilizer for J&K and Ladakh UTs (Director Agriculture Production & Farmers’ Welfare, Jammu) K K Sharma today convened a virtual meeting with Chief Agriculture Officers of all districts to review the progress in the implementation of Fertilizer Trade Reforms rolled out by GOI. The various issues related to Fertilizer Trading in both divisions of the UT were discussed thread bare in the meeting.
Joint Director Agriculture (Extension), Rajan Sharma; Coordinator DBT J&K, Akhil Vaid and officers from Law Enforcement and Fertilizer Section were also present in the meeting.
Deputy Director Law Enforcement, Kashmir, N. S. Bali, ADLE Kashmir, Imran Sheikh and other out-station officers including Chief Agriculture Officers, DAOs of all districts participated in the meeting through virtual mode.
K. K. Sharma highlighted the importance of fertilizer as the main input for agricultural and horticultural crops and stressed on smooth and timely stocking/supply in the UT.
Spelling out the objective of the meeting, the Controller Fertilizers emphasized on gearing up the field functionaries for speedy implementation of Fertilizer Trading related reforms recently rolled out by GOI. The Controller Fertilizers exhorted upon the officers of the Agriculture Department to put in all out efforts to educate fertilizer Dealers and others concerned for achieving the target of 100% QR Code installation and up gradation of PoS machines to 3.1 version. He stressed on liquidation of stocks held by the retailers in their PoS so that ground stock match with fertilizer availability in iFMS Portal.
The Controller Fertilizer instructed the concerned officers to verify and upload the top 20 urea buyers in each district as GOI is maintaining vigil on use of subsidized urea for non-agricultural purpose. He further directed the concerned for scaling up the cashless transaction between wholesalers to retailers and retailers to farmers so that full implementation of fertilizer business through digital process is ensured. Also the stocks held in the non-functional PoS should be liquidated at the earliest.

KR Desk