China’s coronavirus curbs are disrupting the supply of fertiliser to the country’s northeastern breadbasket, just a month before spring planting, and pose a threat to this year’s corn and soybean crops. Farmers typically have fertiliser prepared in early April before applying it to fields later in the month during the sowing processing. But China’s worst outbreaks of Covid-19 since the pandemic began two years ago have triggered strict controls on the movement of people and goods, sharply slowing deliveries. Fertiliser producers, dealers, analysts and associations said rules requiring truck drivers to take coronavirus tests every 24 hours and to obtain special passes to deliver goods, along with factory suspensions due to local cases, are all contributing to tight supplies. “The production of nitrogen fertiliser, and fertiliser preparation for spring planting, has been greatly affected,” the China Nitrogen Fertiliser Industry Association said this week. 5 major concerns for China’s food security Jilin, China’s second-largest corn-growing province, has been among the hardest hit after the local government banned the movement of people across the provincial border from March 14 as coronavirus infections numbered into the thousands daily. “The fertiliser supply here couldn’t be tighter,” said a Jilin-based dealer surnamed Yan, who is short more than 2,000 tonnes of the critical crop nutrient for his customers. The bottleneck comes amid record-high fertiliser prices, driven up by strong global demand, high energy costs and sanctions on major producers Russia and Belarus . Despite efforts by Beijing to cool prices, China’s wholesale fertiliser index (CFCI) remains 40 per cent higher than a year ago. That had discouraged many dealers from stockpiling fertiliser in recent months, leaving them scrambling for more during their busiest sales period. Yao, a dealer in Liaoning, said he’s short about a third of what he needs. The transport curbs are especially problematic for the northeast, which does not have enough local fertiliser production and relies on deliveries from other provinces. The northeast’s Heilongjiang , Jilin and Liaoning provinces and Inner Mongolia region produce more than 40 per cent of China’s corn and half its soybeans. Prices of corn and soybeans are hovering at record highs. Are farming subsidies the answer to China’s grain security woes? Top fertiliser producer Sinofert Holdings still had about 80,000-100,000 tonnes of product waiting to be shipped, executive director Ma Yue told reporters on an earnings call last week, even after getting about 1,000 “green passes” for trucks. The special passes to deliver critical goods take time to process and must be renewed daily. It has also become increasingly difficult to find drivers willing to work under the restrictions, dealers said. The challenges come even as Beijing repeatedly calls for all-out efforts to guarantee successful harvests amid global food-security concerns. Fertiliser had reached 68.8 per cent of Jilin’s farming households by Wednesday, despite the challenges, the state-run Jilin Daily reported, adding that the supply of farm materials was “orderly and stable”.