Agriculture in Nepal

[1] According to the World Bank, agriculture is the main source of food, income, and employment for the majority of the population in Nepal.

[1] Although land reclamation and settlement were occurring in the Terai Region, environmental degradation and ecological imbalance resulting from deforestation also prevented progress.

The conflicting goals of producing cash crops both for food and for industrial inputs also were problematic.

Fertile lands in the Terai Region and hardworking peasants in the Hill Region provided greater supplies of food staples (mostly rice and corn), increasing the daily caloric intake of the population locally to over 2,000 calories per capita in 1988 from about 1,900 per capita in 1965.

Other food crops included wheat, millet, barley, and coffee, but their contribution to the agricultural sector was small.

Medicinal herbs were grown in the north on the slopes of the Himalayas, but increases in production were limited by continued environmental degradation.

According to government statistics, production of milk, meat, and fruit had improved but as of the late 1980s still had not reached a point where nutritionally balanced food was available to most people.

In 1989-90 despite poor weather conditions and a lack of agricultural inputs, particularly fertilizer, there was a production increase of 5 percent.

There is a need to both improve agricultural productivity and make it more resilient to climate uncertainty and change in general.

Recent increases in floods and droughts have raised concerns that the climate is changing rapidly and that existing arrangements for irrigation design and management may need to be reconsidered.