According to information available, the weather conditions in the recent days have been very conducive to wheat crop and in such a scenario the demand of urea also shoots up. Farmers say that if they get adequate amount of urea in this season it improves the quality of crop to a great extent, which fetches them a good price.

This is the reason that farmers are approaching government agencies and arhtiyas in large numbers for urea these days. But, all of them are not lucky enough to lay their hands on the required quantity of urea and many have to return disappointed.

Sources said that there was an acute shortage of urea in the district and the farmers had no other option but to buy the same from arhtiyas who were charging at will. Sources said that a majority of farmers were making rounds of government agencies like IFFCO and KRIBHCO as their urea was cheap as compared to that of private firms.

But the distribution centres of both these agencies were already short of stock owing to the rising demand of urea after rain. Long queues of farmers were seen outside the IFFCO office on the Ferozepore road all along last week.

Amarjeet Singh, a farmer struggling for urea for the past four days, said that his wheat crop was turning yellow due to lack of urea, but he was yet to get the same despite all his efforts.

The Director of Agriculture Department, Mr Balwinder Singh, denied any shortage of urea and said that this year the department had a demand of 11.75 lakh metric tonnes of urea, which was slightly higher than the last year's 11.54 lakh metric tonnes.

Out of this 9.2 lakh metric tonnes of urea had been made available till January 5. He said that there may be some problem due to a sharp rise in demand, but there was no shortage of urea. He said that urea plants in Nangal and Bathinda were producing 3100 metric tonnes of urea daily.