Booking Through App Must for Urea Purchases

Hyderabad: The agriculture department, which faced severe criticism over supply of urea to farmers in the Kharif crop season earlier this year, is all set to roll out a mobile phone app-based purchase system, which the department says is designed to ensure seamless distribution and sales of the fertiliser.

For now, the app is available for Android phones on Google Play Store as ‘Fertilizer Booking App’, and was tested in Peddapalli district on Thursday. The testing was extended to 10 more districts on Friday. If everything went well, it would see a statewide rollout on Monday.

While the app’s use has been made mandatory for farmers requiring urea, and this has come under flak from opposition parties which said this will lead to problems, agriculture department officials said the primary focus was to eliminate panic among farmers over the availability of urea.

“Booked bags are reserved for a full day, and the booking is valid for 24 hours. If a farmer cannot make it to the selected store within that period, a fresh booking needs to be made,” Agriculture Commissioner B. Gopi said.

The system, he explained, showed how many bags were available at a given store. As farmers book their requirements, those numbers will be deducted from the available number. Unclaimed bags will be added back to the available stock.

This plan, he said, was to prevent the panic that was witnessed in the last crop season when farmers with larger fields picked up what they wanted in a single go. This left many small farmers struggling even to get one or two bags of fertiliser, he said.

This time round, with the app making it mandatory to declare which crop a farmer plans to raise, the urea he or she can buy will be decided accordingly. There are two data points – one the extent of land, the second the crop to be raised. For instance, each acre of paddy requires 2.5 bags, maize 3.5 bags an acre and chilli five bags.

The idea is to provide an assurance to farmers that they will get the urea they need, at a time they need, and without panicking or rushing to the shops to stand in long queues.

Dr Gopi said farmers who do not have smartphones to use the app can have their requirements booked by volunteers who will be available at all 10,000 fertiliser shops in the state, who can assist them in booking their urea requirements, he said.