The Novel Coronavirus COVID-19 is a global threat causing unprecedented fear, uncertainty, large-scale disruption, a sense of emergency everywhere keeping people restricted and confined at home to prevent the virus spread with consequent huge knock on economy and interestingly agriculture is at the front and centre of the news. Despite facing huge challenges, our farmers and agricultural value chain workers have kept the supply chain working from farm to fork for agricultural produces. Similarly, the vendors enabling factory to farm services operational for agri-inputs like fertiliser worked on war footing for keeping supply of food continued to the common people and economy rolling. Fertiliser and agriculture have boosted the moral of rural India during this tough time with the intervention of the Government in improving liquidity of farmers through various measures. Lessons from the Corona pandemic need to be utilised in strengthening agriculture for making self-reliant development with sound implementable plans and suitable investments.

Fertilizer and Agriculture

According to the United Nations (UN), the global population is expected to reach 9.2 billion by 2050 and accordingly we have to grow food to eliminate hunger. This required increase in food production has to occur on less available arable land and other scarce resources by ecological intensification, the goal of which is to increase yield per unit of landholding approaching the “attainable yield” of farming systems with minimal or no negative environmental impact. The world will not be able to meet its food production goals without depending on biotechnology and improved genetics, and of course without fertilizer. Chemical fertilizer is the key factor for 40 to 60% of the world’s food production. It is difficult to determine exactly how much crop yield is due to the use of chemical fertilizer beside other factors like inherent soil fertility, climatic conditions, crop rotations, management and the crop itself  but  it is a proven fact that fertilizers with crop and site specific nutritional proportion and quantity adopting integrated nutrient management is essential to maintain crop productivity at existing levels and will be even more crucial if yields are to be increased in the backdrop of increasing food production to feed the ever increasing population. Thus, the issue of fertiliser is a very important and integral part of agriculture.

Sufferings of farmers during COVID-19 Pandemic

The economic impact of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic in India has been largely disruptive magnifying the pre-existing risks to India`s economic outlook. Under complete lockdown, more than 50% of businesses in the country were projected as significantly affected where supply chains have been put under stress with the lockdown restrictions where daily wage labourers are at most risk. Small businesses were already thrown into chaos by the epidemic (Bartik et al., 2020). Many Indian companies had either to temporarily suspend or significantly reduce operations while many young start-ups were severely impacted due to restricted funding. Lockdown started from 24^th March during the harvesting season of rabi crops. As farm produces are perishable in nature, large number of farmers throughout the country faced huge uncertainty where problem was aggravated due to shortage of labour in one hand and distress sale at throw away price on the other as a result of closing of restaurants, hotels and dhabas. Fruits, vegetables, flowers, poultry and milk producers were the worst sufferer.

Fertilizer sale scenario

At macro level, the data from the Department of Fertilizers shows all-India nutrient sales in March 2020 during which lockdown started registered overall growth of 17.7% from 24.6 lakh metric ton (LMT) in March 2019 to 28.96 LMT in March 2020 which dropped to 20.56 LMT during April 2020 as against 14.17 LMT in April 2019 with 45.1% growth which was due to 36.2 per cent for urea (10.95 LMT versus 8.04 LMT in April 2019), 71.7 per cent for DAP (2.97 LMT versus 1.73 LMT), 81.4 per cent for N-P-K-S complex fertilizers (3.9 LMT versus 2.15 LMT), 43 per cent for MOP (1.33 LMT versus 0.93 LMT), 5.6 per cent for SSP (1.31 LMT versus 1.24 LMT) and 37.5 per cent for compost (0.11 LMT versus 0.08 LMT).

 Table 1. Fertilizer sale scenario (All India)

Reason of March-April 2020 growth might be due to the more area  coverage under rabi crops as a result of extended monsoon leading to recharged groundwater tables with filled reservoirs leading to  more demand of fertilizers for bumper crop. Retail sales of fertiliser have surged by almost 98 per cent year-on-year in May 2020. During April-June 2020, the retail point of sale (POS) of fertilizers to farmers was 111.61 lakh tonnes which is 82.81 per cent higher than the last year`s sale of 61.05 lakh tonnes during the same period.

Lockdown has clearly not impacted nutrient sales partly because of agricultural inputs being exempted from any movement/ distribution/ retailing restrictions. The momentum behind sales of urea, DAP, NPK, MOP and SSP fertilizers in India has been primarily driven by increased crop acreage and solid expectations for the on-going monsoon after the IMD forecast of rainfall for the country during the four-month (June-September) season to be 102% of the ‘normal’ monsoon coupled with the panic buying since dealers wanted to stock up in anticipation of enough kharif demand. Normally retail sale of fertilizers mostly takes place on credit  and the credit period extends to 75-90 days for April sales,  45-60 days for May sales, 15-30 days for June sales , and that of  10-15 days in July as the kharif cropping season progresses. But this time, farmers purchased mostly in cash which indicates good uptake down the line from retailers. Also, there were worries that the weakening of the rupee may lead to higher prices of imported fertilizers in near future.

To analyse the fertilizer sale dynamics more closely, a  pilot study was conducted involving 2 wholesalers, 2 retailers and a reputed Cooperative sale points of Murshidabad district of West Bengal in connection with sale of fertilizers and the net profit earned during this lockdown period so far.

It has been found that almost all the sale points have sold marginally more fertilizers during April-July 2020 as against the corresponding period of 2019 but the extra profit earned this time has been very substantial. According to sellers, profit was more due to better liquidity and better demand of inputs from farmers which has primarily been due to good farm gate price of potato, better selling of paddy at MSP (Rs.1815.00 per quintal), early onset of monsoon and exemption of farm related activities from lockdown restrictions.

Table 2. Comparison of sale of fertilizers and profit by the wholesalers and retailers during 2019 and 2020

Fertilizer and Agriculture as shock absorber

Farmer knows very well that he can reap a good harvest and earn profit if he uses fertilizers efficiently and effectively. So, the most important thing at the end of the day is that even during pandemic the farmer wants fertilizer. There is certainly no shortage of demand here which might not be so with cars, two-wheelers, other organised sectors and of course many unorganised sectors of economy. A micro level entrepreneurial survey was conducted involving few vendors with non-agri micro enterprises like pavement stall, snack stall, barber shop, motor garage, cobbler who had to close or /suspend their business and became jobless during pandemic as is evident from the table. The agriculture & allied sectors acted as shock absorber giving them breathing space providing with alternate entrepreneurial means on road ensuring a sizable income to live and earn their livelihood which helped them enabling food access and support to the needy people who were otherwise compelled to remain in their house under lockdown.