ISSUES IN MOUNTAIN |
ISSUES IN MOUNTAIN DEVELOPMENT is a series released from time to time to brief planners, development workers, researchers and donors on recent trends, findings, and issues affecting mountain development. The papers in this series can be quoted with due acknowledgments.Comments are welcome.
Ensuring Local Food Security:
An Example from the Mountain of Nepal
Food security in some mountain areas can be improved through cash crop farming based on
mountain-specific comparative advantages, such as favourabe agroclimatic conditions.
However, governments need to play a critical role here - they must focus on improving local
capability; on generating appropriate technologies and ensuring that these are transferred to
farmers; on developing markets and the necessary linkages to them; and on building
appropriate physical-social infrastructure. There is also a need to collate existing data and
create a database on the extent of poverty and hunger.
The Context
Food security essentially means a state of affairs in which people have access to sufficient and
nutritious food in order to maintain a healthy and active life throughout the year. Food
insecurity anywhere is a problem of inadequate access, resulting from inadequate purchasing
power. In the context of mountain development, food security should not lay emphasis on
growing foodgrains only, rather it should provide productive options for growing high-value
crops having comparative advantages. This paper discusses local strategies adopted by
people from the mountain districts of the Rapti Zone of Nepal and presents a successful case
for ensuring food security based on growing off-season vegetables in fragile mountain areas. It
depicts how food security can be achieved through cash security and presents some important
issues.
Local Food Security Strategy
Migration, including animal sales and barter systems, is used as an indigenous food security strategy especially during winter and spring. | In the inaccessible, middle and high Rapti mountains, apart from in a few fertile river valleys, the farmlands do not produce adequate foodgrains. Landholdings are small, fragile, marginal, and vertical. The agroclimatic conditions during winter are harsh. Thus, many family heads and young persons migrate for part of the year in search of food security. The boxed text on the following page presents some indigenous household strategies used to cope with food security in the Rapti mountains. Lack of food security implies greater hardship on women and children. Large numbers of unproductive cattle are raised to increase the amount of manure for fertiliser, and the women and children are required to travel to distant forests to collect leaf litter and bedding material for composting and to graze animals. Table 1 shows clearly how vulnerable Nepal's mountainous and hilly areas are in terms of food availability, while the plains (terai) enjoy foodgrain surpluses. |
Prospects for Local Food Security - A Successful Case
Mountain people, in some relatively accessible resource-poor areas, are beginning to see
some prospects for better food security through farming profitable cash crops. This prospect
lies in harnessing the mountain-specific characteristics. Owing to favourable agroclimatic
conditions, mountain areas have the comparative advantage of being able to grow off-season
vegetables during the summer and rainy seasons when the plains in the south cannot grow
them due to hot and humid conditions. Vegetables, such as tomatoes, peas, beans, and
cabbages, fetch much higher prices in the major market centres in Nepal and India. Banking
on this strategy, some pocket areas of the Rapti mountains underwent a major transformation
in terms of food security as described below.
About four years ago, people living in the uplands bordering Rolpa and Salyan districts were
among the poorest in the Rapti mountains. A farm household, with a small landholding of
about 0.25 hectares - mostly terraced and marginal - could barely feed the family for four to
six months with the scant production of maize, millet, and wheat.
In 1993, USAID-Nepal's Vegetables, Fruits and Cash (VFC) Crops' Programme assisted
local farmers in growing off-season vegetables on a small-scale trial basis in the area; now
known as the Kapurkot Market Shed Area. As they could market and receive cash for the
crops, the results provided a successful example to others. In 1994, about 28 Production and
Marketing Associations (PMAs) with about 450 households produced 225 MT of a variety of
off-season vegetables, valued at Nepali Rupees (NR) 1.8 million (1 US $ = NR 56.75). In the
second year (1995), 93 PMAs, consisting of 2,000 participating households, were formed.
They produced and marketed off-season vegetables amounting to 2,000 MT (NR 10.1m). In
1996 the number of participating households increased to 4,000 (28,000 family members).
They produced and marketed 3,200 MT of off-season vegetables (NR 17.5m). Every
Tuesday and Friday, six to seven hundred farmers - mostly women - brought off-season
vegetables on their backs to the market-shed area from 2 to 6 hours away in the mountains.
Traders from major market centres (e.g., Nepalgunj, Butwal, Bhairahawa, Krishnanager,
Pokhara, and Narayanghat and some Indian border towns) came to purchase the produce
and the two parties negotiated the prices directly.
During this period, the VFC programme assisted the local farmers in forming PMAs and
trained a large number of women farmers in the technical know-how of producing and
marketing off-season vegetables; this also included training in post-harvest technologies. It sent
many of them to different markets in Nepal and India to see vegetable markets and to contact
vegetable traders and marketers. The programme also established market and business
linkages with major lowland towns.
The improved cash income and employment from off-season vegetable production and
marketing increased the per capita food availability two to three times. Earlier, when a
household of eight family members was growing only cereal foodgrains on a 0.25 hectare
farm, the estimated per capita food availability was only 72 kg. After growing off-season
vegetables on about 60 per cent of the total land, the per capita foodgrain availability
increased to 211 kg through foodgrain purchased from the cash received by selling off-season
vegetables. If Rs 5,000 (52 kg) were to be set aside for children's schooling and health care,
the estimated per capita food availability would be 159 kg, which is more than twice the
amount the farm would have attained by growing foodgrains only. Increased cash income from
vegetable farming also helped to empower the women by permitting them greater involvement
in household decision-making.
An economic analysis of farm-level data shows that production and marketing of off-season
vegetables provide much higher returns than cereal foodgrains (Table 2). Similarly, in the
inaccessible mountains of Rukum, growing vegetable seeds is significantly more profitable than
growing wheat crops. Economic analysis shows that the C/B ratios of vegetable seed
production range from 1:2.4 to 1:6.7, compared to 1: 1.7 in the case of wheat crops (Table
3).
Indigenous Strategies for Food Security in the Rapti Mountains, Nepal
Mountain | Dominant Farming Systems | Dominant Community (Ethnic Group) | Food Self-sufficiency Period | Food Security strategies during Food-deficit Period |
High 1. Steep/Flat Highland
| 1. Pasture
and sheep
farming
| Kham Magar(s)
| 3 to 4 months
| Sheep are brought to the foothills of the mountains for grazing and trading. Animals (sheep and baby shepherd dogs) and wool are sold to buy (or are bartered for) foodgrains, clothes, |
2.Pakho-Upland
(terraced and flat)
| 2. Maize - potato -barley farming with local cattle and goats | Kham Magar(s)
| 6 to 7 months
| and other non-food items. After 5 to 6 months, the animals are brought back to summer grazing pastures |
Mid 1. Pakho- Upland (terraced and flat)
| 1. Maize - wheat farming with local cattle and goats
| Kham Magar(s)
| 4 to 5 months
| Middle-aged and mostly young people migrate to the foothills and plains and north India for seasonal agricultural work and public and private construction work |
2.Pakho-Lowland
(terraced and flat)
| 1. Maize - wheat farming with buffaloes, cattle and goats | Chhetri(s)/Brahmin(s)
| 6 to 7 months
| ditto
|
3.Khet-Lowland (river valleys and some terraced | 3. paddy - wheat farming with buffaloes, local cattle and goats | Brahmin(s) & Chhetri(s) | 10 to 12 months | Only a few smallholders go to the Northern States of India to work as agricultural labour |
Tulachan and Bloom (1995) estimated the internal rate of return (IRR) for three representative
farms of the Rapti mountains for an investment programme on high-value agriculture (HVA).
The analysis showed that the estimated IRR for small farmers having 0.25 hectares of land is
higher (46%) than those of high and medium resource farms, indicating that HVA programmes
can address the equity issue.
The successful case described above does not necessarily imply that there should or would be
indiscriminate commercialisation of off-season or summer vegetable production in the
mountains. First, this farm enterprise will be profitable only for a particular period or season of
the year during which no area in the plains can grow these vegetables because of hot and
humid agroclimatic conditions. Secondly, many areas are not suitable because of inaccessibility
and unfavourable biophysical characteristics. Dry and arid areas without irrigation are also not
suitable. Many areas that are prone to hailstones or receive heavy rainfall cannot grow
off-season vegetables.
Table 2: Costs and Benefits of Production and Marketing of Off-season Vegetables
(in Rupees per hectare Mid-Mountains--Syangja, 1994)
Commodity | Gross Cost | Gross Benefit | Cost-Benefit Ratio |
Cauliflowers | 42,200 | 192,000 | 1:4.5 |
Cabbages | 40,000 | 216,000 | 1:5.4 |
Radishes | 33,800 | 108,000 | 1:3.2 |
Tomatoes | 71,920 | 336,000 | 1:4.7 |
Table 3: Costs and Benefits of Production and Marketing of Vegetable Seeds (in
Rupees per hectare), the Rapti Mountains -- Rukum, 1994
Commodity | Gross Cost | Gross Benefit | Cost-Benefit Ratio |
Wheat | 11,820 | 20,000 | 1:1.7 |
Radishes | 19,980 | 50,400 | 1:2.5 |
Cauliflowers | 17,760 | 120,000 | 1:6.7 |
Mustard | 17,760 | 42,400 | 1:2.4 |
Onion | 26,160 | 88,900 | 1:3.4 |
Cress | 16,300 | 41,600 | 1:2.8 |
Source: Tulachan, Pradeep M. and Roger A. Bloom (1995). Economic
Analysis for Market Access to Rural Development Project.
USAID/N, Kathmandu, June 1995.
Such a commecialisation process should properly link upland (source of vegetable crops) and
lowland markets (source of foodgrains). Market demand and prices of fresh vegetables, as
well as lowland food availability, should be constantly monitored. Excessive and indiscriminate
use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers, detrimental to both the environment and public
health, should be restricted.
Food Security Policy Issues for Mountain Areas
Mountains are especially vulnerable to food scarcity because of their specific characteristics, e.g., inaccessibility, fragility/marginality, and verticality, which are serious impediments to increasing foodgrain production.
Farmers in groups can share new technologies improved seed materials, market information, scarce water resources, and other inputs cheaply and more effectively. | The success story in this paper provides some important lessons. It
also raises some key food policy issues that could be relevant to
food security in similar resource-poor mountain environments of the
Hindu Kush-Himalayas (HKH). First, emphasis on local capacity building should be the prime focus of any government intervention or donor and NGO programme. Farmers' group formation related to certain productive activities in mountain communities, such as the Production and Marketing Associations for off-season vegetables, has several advantages. Group savings could assist cash-poor farmers. In groups, they can considerably increase their bargaining power over traders for determining product prices. Secondly, market development and linkages become absolutely critical for promoting food security through farm income. Knowledge and skills on post-harvest techniques, such as picking, grading, packing, processing, storage, and transport, are very essential for the mountain farmers to market quality products competitively in major market centres. The government has an important role to play in generating appropriate technology and transferring it to farmers' fields. It also has a role to play in building both physical (roads) and social (training local human resources) infrastructures. Pricing policies should ensure that the comparative advantages in mountain areas are fully developed. Unnecessary restrictions and regulations in trade or movements of goods and services related to HVA can kill private initiatives, and they can be detrimental to the whole process of mountain development and transformation. Finally, the government has an important role to play in formulating mountain-specific policies that enhance farming systems and economically-profitable options that ensure household food security for mountain dwellers. |
The Challenge Ahead
Although the global forum has placed so much importance on world food security, unless this
issue is addressed locally, mountain people will continue to suffer from food insecurity.
Various economic analyses and the Rapti study presented here suggest that mountain areas
have comparative advantages in HVA and not in foodgrain crops as emphasised by past
policies aimed at achieving food sufficiency.
However, the challenge is to have an improved understanding of the underlying causes and
magnitude of food insecurity for the entire Hindu Kush-Himalayan region. The HKH
mountains contain unique agro-ecological zones; each having specific mountain communities,
farming systems, and differential scales of poverty with various socioeconomic and cultural
values. ICIMOD has commenced a systematic study and analysis of new emerging policy
issues in order to frame alternative mountain-specific policies to promote food security.
Attempts will be made to create a strong database on the extent of poverty and hunger;
household economies; crop and livestock production; seasonality; gender roles; and inter-and
intra-household food distribution emphasising gender, children, and the poor under specific
farming conditions in each unique agroecological zone. Failure to achieve household food
security in the mountains will further aggravate poverty and hunger resulting in increasing
degradation of mountain environments and, thus, threatening the very survival of global
ecosystems.
January 1997 | Contact: Dr. Pradeep M. Tulachan e-mail: partap@icimod.org.np |
Further Readings
Business Week, 1996. The New Economics of Food. USA: McGraw Hill Company
FAO, 1996. Food Security Assessment. WFS 96/Tech/7, Provisional Version. Rome: FAO
Pratap, T., 1995. High Value Cash Crops in Mountain Farming - Mountain Deveopment
Processes and Opportunities. Discussion Paper Series MFS 95/1. Kathmandu: ICIMOD
Sharma, H. R., 1996. Mountain Agricultural Development Processes and Sustainability:
Micro-Level Evidence from Himachal Pradesh, India Himalayas. Discussion Paper Series
MFS 96/2. Kathmandu: ICIMOD