Overwhelming majority of population groups in developing countries like ours has been facing new challenges and threats posed by food and livelihood insecurities. Still 25% of total population of Nepal lives below the poverty line. Agriculture is the backbone of the nation. More than 65.7% of the population depends on agriculture sector accounting for 31 percent of the GDP (MoAC/GoN, 2009). In Nepal, agriculture is subsistence in nature in spite of the fact that farming has always remained a private sector domain since the time immemorial. Chronic food insecurity and hunger are part of daily life for millions of Nepalese people. For families living in Nepal’s remote mountain regions in particular, getting access to sufficient food is a daily struggle. More than half of the population of Nepal lives in remote hill and mountain regions. Agricultural development in these areas has been neglected for years, and food production fails to meet the needs of the population. People living in many parts of the country are reliant on expensive food imported from India. Till 4 decades ago, Nepal was a net exporter of food grains but now it has turned as a moderate food grain importer since mid of eighty even rice-the staple. Nepal now, has to import nearly one third of its national food needs from abroad annually. Since the 1990s, Nepal has been reliant on food imported from India to feed its growing population. Imported food is more expensive than food produced locally, indeed. About 20% of Nepal’s population (6.4 million) is food insecure. Nepal, with a population of 28 million, is a severely food deficit country struggling to recover from an eleven-year civil war. With a GDP per capita of US$ 470 (estimated FY, 2009), Nepal remains the poorest country in South Asia and is the 13th poorest country in the World behind Rwanda . Approximately 55% of Nepalese live below the international poverty line of US$ 1.25/day . An analysis of national poverty indicators reveals that poverty rates are the highest among agricultural wage earners, small and marginal agricultural households, traditionally-excluded ethnic and caste groups, and illiterate households. Small and marginal land holders (with less than 0.2 ha) are a growing demographic and account for 76 percent of all poor . In 2009, WFP published a comparative analysis of Nepal, concluded that hunger is a substantive and urgent issue in Nepal that needs to be addressed. The situation has been described as extremely alarming in the Far-and Mid-Western Mountains. The food security situation in most of Nepal’s sub-regions is alarming and 3 sub-regions are considered seriously food insecure. Not a single sub-region in Nepal can be classified as moderate or low in terms of their hunger index scores (WFP Nepal, 2009). Recent declining agricultural production has depressed rural economies and increased widespread hunger and urban migration throughout Nepal. This situation is compounded by a population growth rate of over two percent per year and one of the highest ratios of population to arable land in the world . In 2009, the World Food Programme reported that 43 percent of Nepal’s 75 districts faced a food deficit problem, and 23 districts were chronically food insecure. Two of three Nepalese suffer food insecurity at some point during the year. Due to extremely low levels of income and agricultural production, the poorest households must allocate almost three –quarters of their income to food . Additionally, many of these households were deeply affected by a decade long conflict, frequent drought, and other natural disasters, leaving them with few mechanisms to cope with rising food prices . In Nepal the underlying causes of hunger, poverty, under nutrition, and low agricultural productivity include: limited use of improved agriculture and irrigation practices; lack of infrastructure; low availability of arable land; household labor scarcities due to out-migration; political instability; land degradation; exposure to climatic extremes; lack of land reform and inequitable land distribution practices; poor sanitation and hygiene practices and traditional food preferences, preparation and consumption patterns. Nepal’s nutrition statistics are some of the worst in the world. Almost 50 percent of the population is undernourished and half of all under five are chronically malnourished. According to the Nepal Demographic Health Survey (2006), 39 percent of children below five years are underweight, 49 percent are stunted, and 13 percent are wasted. In the hill and mountain regions, stunting rates reach 80 percent and the prevalence of underweight is as high as 63 percent. In the Terai, more than one third of women and half of all children under the age of five are anemic . Although the problem of under nutrition is pervasive across Nepal, national aggregates mask wide disparities across socio-economic groups and ecological regions. In households in the poorest quintile, 54 percent of children below five years were found to be underweight . Low birth weight is a contributing factor to under nutrition in Nepal, where 14.3 percent of children are born with low birth weight . High levels of low birth weight can be attributed to poor inter-generational nutrition. For instance, almost 25 percent of women in Nepal have a body mass below normal, and the prevalence of anemia among pregnant women is about 36 percent. Additionally, household food distribution and cultural food taboos, as well as access to nutritional food are contributing factors to low birth weights. Other causes play important roles, such as lack of knowledge of nutritional requirements during pregnancy and lactation, feeding and caring practices for young children, access to health services, gender inequity, and water and sanitation. The WFP, FAO, and the GoN Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives (MoAC) have predicted in the NAGA report that the current food deficit will worsen because of continuing decline in wheat and barley production . This report further notes that : (i) 66 percent of households in Nepal are experiencing food shortages; (ii) 43 percent of households are skipping or reducing meals; (iii) 30 percent of households in the hill and mountain regions are forced to consume seed stock and (iv) 73 percent of households in mountain region send at least one member out for work . Due to increasing population and declining rate of agricultural growth, Nepal is considered a structurally food deficit country. Crop production and poverty rates vary significantly by region and district. Geographically, the Terai is a food surplus producing region and is considered the granary of the country, whereas the hill and mountain regions both generally experience food deficits. Food production also varies from east to west. Crop production is often very poor in the far–western and mid-western regions; not surprisingly these areas typically have the highest rates of food insecurity and hunger. Nepal’s terrain, 64 percent of which is covered with mountains, is only about 22 percent arable, and is therefore not easily suitable for efficient food grain production. The rugged terrain increases transport costs, impedes the linkage of products to markets, and makes it difficult to provide services to large segments of the country. The flat plains of the Terai region represent less than 15 percent of the nation’s territory, yet hold the greatest potential for large-scale commercial agriculture. Nevertheless, there are opportunities in the hills and mountains for high value horticultural crops and widespread increases in agricultural production. Natural disasters (especially droughts in mountains/hills and floods in the Terai) coupled with effects of climate change have impacted-with increasing severity in the past few years-agricultural production and livelihoods, especially in marginal locations like Karnali farmed by the more food insecure households. Additionally, factors relating to knowledge and behaviors, community capacities, and external support compound the poor food and nutritional status of the households and increase malnutrition and morbidity, which drain family fiancés and reduce earning capacities. Finally, coping strategies such as consumption of seed stock and sale of productive assets, adopted in case of severe shocks, places households on a reduced income trajectory, for considerable periods of time. In most part of the country, agriculture is severely constrained. Use of improved crop varieties and livestock breed and adoption of appropriate management practices is low; incidence of transboundary and economically important diseases and insect pests is high; and overall agricultural productivities are low or falling. Agriculture is typically characterized by smallholder, traditional and subsistence farming. At the individual household level, current scale and scope of farming provides employment and produces food for only a part of the year . Because of underdeveloped physical and economic infrastructure, opportunities for off-farm employment and income are limited. This has served as the main ‘push’ factor for high and raising rate of outmigration of young, productive labor force from the region, leaving agriculture in the hands of women and aged population. This has led to feminization of agriculture and shortage of labor in peak seasons, contributing to further decline in agricultural productivities. Entire districts in Karnali zone lag behind in all indicators of development and suffer the severest forms of human deprivation and sufferings in mid-western development region. The rich ecological biodiversity of these hilly and mountainous districts in the north offer great potential for producing a ranges of non-traditional high-value, low-volume commodities with market potential in the plains of Terai in the South. However, the required technologies for this are either unavailable or have failed to reach the farm level, and there is limited or no market linkage between the north and south. Opportunities exist fox raising farm productivity and increasing household incomes in the project area through provision of appropriate technologies, supply of improved seed/breed, and commercial production of high value agricultural and non-timber forest products, as demonstrated in some pockets by other projects . P
Posted on: Sat, 22 Jun 2013 13:31:52 +0000
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