Minister Basnet with the participants of the workshop

Kathmandu: With the support of FAO Technical Cooperation Programme, the Government of Nepal, Ministry of Forests and Environment, Food and Agriculture organization of the United Nations and IUCN jointly implemented a two years project on “Enhancing Rural Livelihoods in Abandoned Agricultural Land through Agroforestry (2016-2018) pilot project in Parbat and Kaski districts”. The project has assessed/ determined the best bet agroforestry options for underutilized/ abandoned agriculture land types.

In the context of food insecurity and poverty across rural communities, the current scale of abandoned agricultural land became one of the key development challenges in Nepal. Most rural hill districts are currently experiencing food insecurity (41 out of 75 districts are food deficit). Increasing abandonment of agricultural land entails less production and decreasing state of productivity of land.

There is a challenge for increasing population in rural areas to have enough food for survival. Hence, the only way to address the problem of food insecurity is to increase agricultural production and productivity of available land. Despite growing challenges of land abandonment in Nepal, so far very limited analysis of the effects of land underutilization/ abandonment at the local level has been undertaken.

Little consideration has been given to develop and test options for generating income from underutilized/abandoned agricultural land, although the potential is high. There is clearly an increasing trend of agricultural land abandonment in Nepal, which is a major bottleneck in achieving national development goals, and addressing poverty and food scarcity. More and more youths are migrating from rural areas to city centers and abroad in search of jobs and cash income, leaving only elderly and child in the villages. Reutilization of abandoned land is possible only by retaining those migrating youths in the villages and encouraging them in farming. The nature of land abandonment is multi-faceted; hence it needs effective policies, strategies and approaches in addressing proximate and underlying causes of this problem.

Speaking in a recently concluded sharing workshop of the jointly organized by the Ministry of Forest and Environment, FAO and IUCN, Minister for Forest and Environment Shakti Bahadur Basnet said that the project has laid a foundation to agroforestry integrated approach consolidating many components in the changed context of community.

Dr Yogendra Karki, Joint Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development pointed out the urgent need to reduce abandoned and underutilized land by 24 percent through mechanization and hi-tech in the agriculture.

Stating that Livelihoods of people adopting best bet agroforestry options in underutilized/abandoned agricultural land have been enhanced in the project area,  Dr Yurdi Yasmi, Lead Technical Officer of FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific in Bangkok, said that productivity of underutilized and abandoned agricultural land increased with significant contribution to livelihood enhancement of the target population.

Dr Sindhu Nath Dhungana, Joint Secretary of the Ministry of Forest and Environment said that agroforestry projects are to be launched in mid-hills and Terai belt to bring the underutilized land back to cultivation and production activities.

Expressing concerns over a lot more land is lying fallow, especially those owned by absentee landlords, the forest experts Dr Ganga Dahal and Dr Bishnu Pandit said that Cardamom based agroforestry, coffee based agroforestry, Broom grass based agroforestry, tea based agroforestry, lapsi based multitier agroforestry and fodder based multitier agroforestry are identified in Kaski and Parbat as potential best bet agroforestry considering micro climatic suitability, comparative advantage having more income potential, market demands, and less labor requirement.

Dr Binod Saha, Assistant FAO Representative said that the piloted project has paved a way to address issues related to abandoned and underutilized land that would lead to enrich the national policies in preparing strategies and plans of actions.