18 pages, This study examines factors that appear to contribute to farmers’ adoption and discontinuation of poly house technology for off-season vegetable production. We collected cross-sectional survey data from a sample of 151 households in Kaski district, Nepal during October 2018. The data are analyzed using Heckman’s two stage sample selection model. The study reveals that the family members report being engaged in nonfarm sector that there is an increased probability of discontinuation of poly house technology. Farmers may be diverting their labor towards nonfarm activities that result in higher returns to labor and different risks. At the same time, the results indicate that farmers who did not receive training on vegetable production were more likely to discontinue poly house technology. It was also found that increasing farmers’ engagement with marketing activities increased the likelihood of farmers to continue poly house technology and increase household income. The provision of continued technical support (e.g., training), input supply (e.g., seeds, fertilizers) and market information are essential to sustain the adopted technologies. The study sheds light on the sustainability of technology adoption by underpinning the importance of extension services for longer-term adoption. We believe that the combined effect of various technologies would be associated with sustained adoption of the improved off-season technologies. This provides a new direction to operationalize farmer-oriented policies in agricultural extension and helps in devising programs for sustained adoption of technology.
10 pages, Agricultural information is very essential for smallholder farmers to increase farm production and productivity. However, there is no proper access to accurate and adequate agricultural information to smallholder farmers. This paper attempts to identify the existing agricultural information source and the agricultural information need of the smallholder farmers along with usefulness of the provided agricultural information. Household level data were obtained from four wards of Bharatpur metropolitan of Chitwan district during 2019. The result showed agrovet shops as most common source of agricultural information for smallholder farmers. The most needed agricultural information was about input market and prices followed by disease and pest control. Moderately useful agricultural information was provided to smallholder farmers. Findings of this research suggest that context specific agricultural information should be provided through the existing channels to the smallholder farmers.
18pgs, This analysis investigates the potential mechanisms and the practical significance of agricultural value chain development in a geographically challenging rural area of a developing country. Using data from a carefully designed primary survey administered in a hill and mountainous region in Western Nepal, we show that linking small-scale producers to regional and local traders can help increase income. Analysis of impact pathways shows that the positive impact on household income emerges through higher agricultural income, driven by higher sale volume at lower prices. Focusing on high value commodities in rural areas, where arable land is not always fully exploited or utilized, appears to lead to acreage expansion and some crop switching, contributing to higher supply albeit at lower prices. The positive impact on household income is practically significant; it helps improve household food security and asset accumulation. These findings are robust to alternative specifications. Targeted value chain interventions that strengthen and stabilize small-scale producers’ access to markets can contribute to rural poverty reduction via increase in agricultural income.
Alomia-Hinojosa,Victoria (author), Groot, CJ (author), Andersson, Jens (author), Speelman, Erika (author), McDonald, Andrew (author), and Tittonnell, Pablo (author)
Format:
Journal article
Publication Date:
2022-06-02
Published:
United States: Wiley Online
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 205 Document Number: D12562
13 pages, Intensified livestock production is considered as a promising pathway for smallholder farmers. Nevertheless, this pathway may entail prohibitive investment requirements of labour, capital or trade-offs at farm level that preclude sustainable intensification. We used fuzzy cognitive mapping (FCM) to assess farmers' perceptions of changes in the farm household system resulting from adding livestock to their mixed farms. Farmers identified trade-offs between the increased income and farmyard manure production versus increases in labour requirements for fodder imports. Furthermore, a sensitivity analysis performed on the FCMs showed that an increase in milk market demand could have strong positive effects on livestock production and income. We conclude that FCM is a good tool to rapidly identify trade-offs and analyse perceptions of farmers which revealed that although they consider intensification a promising strategy, the perceived deepening of labour constraints and increasing dependency on fodder import makes a concurrent (sustainable) intensification of these farm systems unlikely.
8pgs, ocial trust and social networks are a common and more valuable phenomenon for the development activities of the rural community in the context of Nepal. However, the development activities of the community are not well perceived from the lens of social trust and social network as it is essential to sustain the development activities. Considering the landscape of social trust and social networks, this study focuses on the situation and effect of social trust and social networks on the development activities at the Rupa Rural Municipality in Kaski. The purpose of this study was to explain the situation of social trust and social networks and also explore interconnection with community-level development interventions. Employing a phenomenological qualitative research design, the primary informations were collected through indepth interviews and recorded informations were transcribed, coded, decoded, analyzed and interpreted. The major thematic aspects such as social trust and social networks of community development have linked with relevant theories. The finding indicate that the development activities of community with their desire and having social trust are found successful. The social networks have played further connective role by interlinking development aspects at community level for sustaining the interventions of community development. Though the study is limited to Rupa Rural Municipality, it has established the importance of social trust and social networks for community development.
10pgs, Conservation agriculture-based sustainable intensification (CASI) is gaining prominence as an agricultural pathway to poverty reduction and enhancement of sustainable food systems among government and development actors in the Eastern Gangetic Plains (EGP) of South Asia. Despite substantial investment in research and extension programs and a growing understanding of the agronomic, economic and labor-saving benefits of CASI, uptake remains limited. This study explores farmer experiences and perspectives to establish why farmers choose not to implement CASI systems despite a strong body of recent scientific evidence establishing the benefits of them doing so. Through thematic coding of semi-structured interviews, key constraints are identified, which establishes a narrative that current households' resources are insufficient to enable practice change, alongside limited supporting structures for resource supplementation. Such issues create a dependency on subsidies and outside support, a situation that is likely to impact any farming system change given the low-risk profiles of farmers and their limited resource base. This paper hence sets out broad implications for creating change in smallholder farming systems in order to promote the adoption of sustainable agricultural technologies in resource-poor smallholder contexts, especially with regard to breaking the profound poverty cycles that smallholder farmers find themselves in and which are unlikely to be broken by the current set of technologies promoted to them.
10 pages, Food safety is a growing concern worldwide but is especially prevalent in Nepal. Agriculture is the country's critical economic sector, and its sustainability is challenged due to the increasing use of agrochemicals. As a result, low Soil Organic Matter (SOM), reduced crop productivity, increased food safety hazards, and negative impacts on human health and the environment are reported in the agriculture sector in Nepal. In 2018, the concept of Good Agriculture Practices (GAP) was introduced in Nepal to address the issues of food safety, trade, and sustainability. As GAP is relatively new to Nepal, it is still broad and ambiguous, which makes its use and implementation difficult. For this purpose, we conducted a literature review on available global evidence to present the benefits of GAP and to identify the critical barriers to the adoption of GA. The review shows GAP's potential to increase crop yield by up to 36%, reduce agrochemicals use by 31%, increase SOM from a mean of 3.32%–3.77%, and increase farmers' income by more than 100%. However, the review has also identified barriers to wider adoption of GAP, broadly categorized into production, extension, regulation and standards, and markets and finance. The valuable outcome of this review is that it proposes five key pathways: (i) Technical capacity building, (ii) Awareness creation, (iii) Soil fertility management strategies, (iv) Extension programs, and (v) Market development for institutionalizing GAP in Nepal, based on the learning from global evidence. This review could be useful for policymakers and the government of Nepal to develop detailed implementation guidelines for GAP, including appropriate policies as well as short, medium, and long-term plans and programs for institutionalizing GAP in Nepal.
13 pages., via online journal., The study explores the impacts of Nepali farmers’ climate change perceptions on their farming practices over the last three decades (1980–2014). Results from a survey with 496 farmers show that nearly all farmers attributed changes in crop varieties and cropping patterns mainly to technological and market-related factors and not to climate change. A comparison between perceptions and meteorological data shows that while perceptions of changes in maximum temperatures did match observed trends, perceptions of changes in minimum temperature and rainfall did not. The results indicate that the climate change message in the past 30 years has not been definite enough to have a consistent impact on either farmers’ perceptions or their farming practices. This may impede farmers’ adaptive capacity in dealing with increasingly severe future climate change impacts. Because of large variations in the micro-climate of the study locations and the locations of the weather stations from which we obtained the meteorological data, the results need to be treated with caution. However, we suggest that for farmers to effectively adapt to climate change, it may be necessary for responsible state and non-state actors to improve their communication on expected climate change impacts.
8 pages, gender, women, extension systems, acces, cell phones, farmers, Nepal (Southern Asia), India (Southern Asia), COVID-19 induced lockdowns have had far reaching impacts on the rural sector, particularly on women farmers. These impacts have been exacerbated by lack of access to reliable and timely agriculture information. Using panel phone survey data from India and Nepal, we study how women's access to agricultural extension was impacted by the lockdowns and its effect on agricultural productivity. We find that women's already low access to formal extension was reduced further, leading to an increased reliance on informal social networks. In both countries, nearly 50% farmers reported negative impacts on productivity due to inaccessibility of information during the lockdown. In India, we find that access to formal extension is mediated by crop type, geographic location and caste identity. We discuss ways in which extension systems in India and Nepal can be made more inclusive and resilient to future crisis, including by adapting group and community-based approaches to post-pandemic best practices.
