Livelihoods and Food Security Nepal
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LIVELIHOODS AND FOOD SECURITY

Rural Nepal is facing a crisis triggered by reducing incomes from traditional agriculture. Climate change and degradation of natural resources is driving down farm productivity, and the subsistence farming communities lack the knowledge and information to transition to improved farming methods and crops that would help them overcome these constraints and harness higher incomes. Even where smallholding communities are able to generate sufficient agricultural produce, they commonly lack access to the marketplace and have little capacity to generate market linkages. There is therefore a dramatic increase in out-migration, especially of the younger male population to urban centres in the country or even beyond its borders in search of economic opportunities. Since they lack the skills necessary to take advantage of jobs available in the modern urban economies, they have to resort to daily wage labour with sub-human working conditions.... Read More

Rural Nepal is facing a crisis triggered by reducing incomes from traditional agriculture. Climate change and degradation of natural resources is driving down farm productivity, and the subsistence farming communities lack the knowledge and information to transition to improved farming methods and crops that would help them overcome these constraints and harness higher incomes. Even where smallholding communities are able to generate sufficient agricultural produce, they commonly lack access to the marketplace and have little capacity to generate market linkages. There is therefore a dramatic increase in out-migration, especially of the younger male population to urban centres in the country or even beyond its borders in search of economic opportunities. Since they lack the skills necessary to take advantage of jobs available in the modern urban economies, they have to resort to daily wage labour with sub-human working conditions. .

Pragya’s Livelihoods programme is helping lift deprived communities out of poverty, providing vital inputs and training across both traditional and niche-sector occupations. Our agricultural projects are helping smallholding farming communities adopt smarter agricultural methods, to take up cultivation of vegetable crops with high market demand, and to diversify farm produce for higher earnings. We are also promoting alternative niche-sector occupations, such as harnessing cultural and ecological heritage for the development of small scale traditional handloom and handicrafts enterprises, as well as eco-friendly hospitality and tourism initiatives, and newer farm-sector livelihoods such as apiculture and mushroom cultivation. To address the issue of youth unemployment, we support young people to achieve their goals through building their vocational skills, improving their employability through development of broad-range competencies, and encouraging young entrepreneurship.

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Success story

Time for strawberries in the poly houses of Nepal

Maya Tamang a 40 years old woman from Gamailo in Nuwakot district of Kakani Gaupalika. Maya has a family of 7 members including 2 children. Being illi

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LIVELIHOODS AND FOOD SECURITY

VOCATIONAL SKILL BUILDING

One of the greatest challenges facing the youth in disadvantaged communities around the world is unemployment, and the economic uncertainty and anxiety that emerges from it. Young people living in rural areas are unable to find productive work due to a deficit of appropriate knowledge, skills, and opportunities. The declining prospects of traditional occupations signal to rural youth potentially worse impoverishment than their forebears. This propels youth outmigration from rural communities to urban centres in a bid to find opportunities for new kinds of work and better prospects for the future; majority however get absorbed into intermittent, low grade, unskilled, poorly-paid wage-labour. At the same time, this has devastating impacts on the communities they leave behind, with the breakdown of established social systems essential to the proper functioning of the community, and an aging population unable to support itself.

LIVELIHOODS AND FOOD SECURITY

VOCATIONAL SKILL BUILDING

Pragya delivers vocational skill-building activities targeting various age-groups in the rural Nepal with programs tailored to their specific needs and capability to learn. Through our rural Educational Resource Centres for example, Pragya equips young people and adults with the knowledge and skills to pursue livelihoods (or supplementary income generation) that have been identified to have significant potential in the area. Since the population is largely into farming, Pragya conducts various training on the farm sector. Training programmes are conducted on improved agronomy, new cash crops including horticultural crops, agroforestry and plantation management, and farm technologies such as poly-house farming and multi-tiered cropping, as well as for goat-rearing, poultry, and apiculture. The farmers are also trained on post-harvest processing to move them to add value to their farm produce which significantly enhances the price they can access for it. Exposure to markets is provided along with developing skills on cooperative endeavour and negotiation, to enable farmers to set up cooperatives and access fair prices for their produce. 

The youth in particular are trained on alternative livelihoods, with the aim of supporting economic diversification which is considered a route out of poverty. Pragya’s Education Resource Centres have conducted training on ‘Rural Tourism’ for rural youth, which included inputs on homestays, food & beverage management, hospitality services and added-value tourism services, and related revenues management. Training on Entrepreneurship and on Computers are provided periodically, to enable movement into setting up microenterprises in the local area or to access available employment.

All members of households below poverty line are trained on life skills that would improve their quality of life, such as management of household finances, budgeting, savings and credit, preventive healthcare and hygiene, water management and sanitation. In addition, inputs are also provided on sustainable use of natural resources and conservation, in view of the sensitive and fragile ecologies that the communities reside in and depend on for their livelihoods.

Pragya collaborates with experts from multiple institutions to source faculty and courses for these training programs. The training content and pedagogy is suited to the farmers and youth from the rural hinterlands and comprises a mix of lectures, audio-visual modules, demonstrations and exposure visits. Beyond the training, Pragya also links up the trainees with the faculty such that there is a continual flow of information, advice and mentoring to those trained to help them effectively utilise the inputs for improving their livelihoods and incomes.

LIVELIHOODS AND FOOD SECURITY

VOCATIONAL SKILL BUILDING

GEOGRAPHY / LOCATION

Pragya’s vocational skill-building work is focussed on Below Poverty Line communities in Humla, Dolpa, Mustang, Dhading, Nuwakot and Sindhupalchok.

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LIVELIHOODS AND FOOD SECURITY

AGRICULTURE DEVELOPMENT AND WATERSHED MANAGEMENT

Nepal’s smallholder farming households depend on small farming and wage labour for their sustenance and livelihoods,and suffer chronic poverty and food insecurity. Lack of capacity for and inability to invest in improved agricultural methods constrains the small farmers from cultivating cash crops, and along with lack of access to post-harvest facilities and resultant high degree of wastage, poor access to markets and trading through exploitative middlemen, results in low farm efficiencies and incomes. In addition, increasing weather variability due to climate change has meant recurrent droughts or floods, frequent crop failures, and rapidly reducing farm productivity levels, with maximum decrease in marginal farms. Several marginal farmer households have been rendered effectively landless due to the pressures of climate change.The fallout is increasing impoverishment and debt burden of the farmers, and an exodus from rural Nepal to urban areas.

LIVELIHOODS AND FOOD SECURITY

AGRICULTURE DEVELOPMENT AND WATERSHED MANAGEMENT

Pragya is working to help small and marginal farmers in Nepal overcome the constraints they face to improving their agricultural incomes. Awareness programmes on improved and resource-efficient agriculture in villages are followed by technical inputs on improved farm technologies, methods, crops and products. Impoverished households are assisted with seeds/saplings, poly-houses, agricultural tools and irrigation systems, to provide a stimulus to help the farmers upgrade their farming practices, reduce costs and enhance farm productivity. The marginal farmers and landless are provided with seed support for uptake of supplementary farm-sector livelihoods such as goat-rearing, apiculture, poultry, etc. Apart from aiding the particular households, this is having the effect of diversifying the rural economies that Pragya intervenes in, rendering more resilient.

Recognising the shared nature of irrigation resources and facilities for farmers in rural Nepal, Pragya emphasizes community infrastructure in this domain. We help farmers map irrigation resources available to them, identify avenues for harnessing them and for more efficient use of these resources, and we support them to implement such measures. We have helped farming communities set up pipelines, channels, storage tanks, and work out norms for shared, equitable and efficient use of these facilities. Watershed management is also a key part of our work with communities. We have trained communities on reclamation of wastelands and land resource management strategies such as erosion control measures and moisture conservation techniques, and facilitating greening and water retention through planting economically important tree/shrubs, fuelwood and fodder species.

The farming communities are also supported with necessary linkages to input suppliers and to markets, as well as to available local support of technical specialists and local government departments. Wherever the capacity exists, Pragya also aids the establishment of nurseries for cash crops and fodder farms, to serve the local farming community. Information is also provided on available government schemes and programmes and communities are provided facilitation services to access these. These linkages help the communities further capitalise on the knowledge and other inputs provided by Pragya and to achieve livelihood security and sustainability.

LIVELIHOODS AND FOOD SECURITY

AGRICULTURE DEVELOPMENT AND WATERSHED MANAGEMENT

GEOGRAPHY / LOCATION

Our work on agriculture development and watershed management has been/is operational in the districts on Dhading, Kavrepalanchok, Nuwakot and Sindhupalchok.

  • ISSUES
  • What we do
  • Impacts