Warehouse run out of fertilizer from early June to till date putting dent in the productivity and leaving farmer restless.

 Warehouse run out of fertilizer from early June to till date putting dent in the productivity and leaving farmer restless

                   

 

                  It's utterly gruesome matter to accept Nepal's  languishing reality in economy, finance business, infrastructure, marketing and Overall system.  Once Let's forget the loopholes over other supportive, substitutional economic system and turn eye to agriculture that holds around 33%of Nepal's economy and 66% of reliance. The import portfolios of Nepal reveal that agri-import is annually peaking up despite overall import is declining (I.e 2018/19  total import 1 lakh 19thousand crore reach to 15% reduced import in 2019/2020 June-july). Before a decade Nepal used to import 4 thousand 4hundred agri-goods but it reached to 25 thousand crore in 2019/2020. Is it fine? Is it sprinting as per our need and reliancy? Is it satisfying a single farmer who is catering us  food on our table every day?

             

                Yuck!!! Its very unfortunate to nod  head left to right to all these questions that reflects our insterility, dependency, and inefficiency even on our professional identity(Agriculture). Every year at peak kharif farmers and responsible govermental  bodies  scumble over hussle in fetching required fertilizers and seeds from international market. The situation recurre frantically this year because of prolonged lockdown.

              

                Though Agriculture Input Company limited (AICL) and Salt trading company ltd(STLC) has posed tender to fertilizer at world bank, fertilizer stucked at kandel port and kalkotta port of India for more than 2 months create a shortage of fertilizer to many paddy and kharif crops since early May. Rupandehi, kapilbastu, Bardia  Banke, Nepalgunj and many  districts from province 2 are facing seasonal hurdles in fetching fertilizers(urea and DAP) from rice  transplantation. 

                

                       Farmers in Banke and Bardia were coerced to put down overrated amount at peak tillering and panicle initiation stage of paddy  (Rs 1200-1500 per sack of urea which used to cost Rs 800). As government authorized company and cooperative were unable to dispatch required urea because of understock inputs farmers unreluctantly fixed channel to fetch and ferry fertilizers from India through porous border. BUt police confiscated all the informal consignment to seize illegal marketing which augment the whoe in fertilizer procurement and crop production.

       

                   According to secretariat to MOALD," Government is not leaving a single stone unturned in managing  tenable fertilizer imports from India. AICL, STCL, MoALD, cooperatives and other governmental bodies are working round the clock to arrest the problem of  insufficiency inequality and inequity in fertilizer distribution to farmer."

            

                       Similar to every year, Nepal undergoes regular tendering procurement process and Government to Government G-2-G deal with india ( Under Nepal-India treaty 2009, India has agreed to sell 100,000 tonnes to Nepal annually at the international parity price to avoid procedural hassles) for regular supply of Fertilizers. Under regular tendering process, normally it used to take 6 months to procure fertilizers(Public procurement Act) which came up with further complicated and lengthy process because of protracted lockdown in many countries in the world. 

           

                   Moreover, G-2-G scheme didn't work to derail the hurdles  due to the closure of the sea port authority office and complete halt of loading/unloading works due to lack of manpower. Till the date only 100,000 tonnes urea and 60,000 DAP was brought in the country with prolonged delay(MoALD) which  ran out without equal and equitable service. It is supposed to ferry  next lot by the end of this month.

                 According to annual research on fertilizer, net fertilizer requirement of Nepal is 0.6 million tonnes to o.8 million tonnes and solely about 170,000 tonnes (120,000 urea and 50,000 DAP) for paddy production. But planned import is 4.5millon tones and real annual import (formal +informal) is only 3 million tones(Hoyum, 2012 as cited in USAID 2014) .I.e Nepal is supplying fertilizer  far less beyond  its need. Even out of the  insufficient import, subsidised fertilizer covers only 38% while rest share of total supplies is met by informal  imports or shipments smuggled through porous border with india.  

           

                Since a long we have been relying on India and  Indian ports in dispaching fertilizers from European countries and other  producing countries.  According to Minister to Agriculture"Our locked seaports , unsupportive geography, limited- insufficient natual gases ,coal  andweak  economy to set up our plant are the weak lines for our dependency to Indian ports." Despite of  Thinking over self-reliancy we  are  annually  compelled  to  struggle for expeding import, international parity over prices, and standard quality of fertilizer at porous border for satisfying fertilizer need of our farmer.

               

                Though the government earmarked a budget for 450,000 tons(i.e 9billion) of subsidized fertilizers which exceed 100,000 tons (5 billion) than the government provided last year to the farmer, the case lurch more harshly this year. We can suppose that  Subsidized provision this year was  subdued because of early lockdown in Hubei (DAP producer) distrupting supply chain,fell of European natural gas( urea producer), recent election in India, hike of fertiliser price globally, controlled border during lockdown, reluctancy of private companies to work on fertilizers, smuggling of more than 70% of total fertilizer requirements through porous border, corruption, illegal trade and negligence of  authorized company on timely posing of tender for the procurement etc.

             

                       Still and all, regular crisis of chemical fertilizer, inability to set our own plant, stringent import and imparity over price of Fertilizers must provide us an opportunity to built up independent. Organic manure, vermi-compost, vermi-phonic, use of botanicals, alternative cultural practices that enhance natural nitrogen fixation must be our new modality to agriculture. BUT then, It doesn't mean that we should completely avoid chemical fertilizer. Its better to avoid import of  agri-goods than agri- inputs. For this government must propose diplomatic scheme with India, pose tender before hassling hours, encourage private companies, cooperative to sort down the pressure on STCL, AICL, arrest corruption, set stringent quarantine and border policy.

      

                          Let's speed up our pace on agriculture and it's input. Genuine move, intellectual action and coordinate system always outweigh the rhetorical questionnaire. So swept left to rhetoric speech and sweft right to intellectual action..

JAY NEPAL