Planting seeds of hope: supporting rural livelihoods in
Nepal
Related pages: Nepal
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DFID has supported the vegetable seed industry since 1997, in 11 districts in
the East, West and Far West regions. In total, our support has helped more than
4000 rural households increase their incomes by between 15% and 50%.
Meet Lal Bahadur Kadal. He was thinking of migrating to India for work
like most of his fellow villagers have done. But instead, through our support,
he participated in seed production training and received vegetable seed. He then
organised himself and 11 other local farmers into a Seed Producer Group. With
our further support, the Group was introduced to seed traders throughout the
country.
In their first year of operation the Group produced and sold around 1 metric
tonne (mt) of seed. This increased to 7 mt the year after, and in 2005, the
Group are contracted to produce 14 mt. The number of seed growers in the village
has increased too; there are now 175 members in the Group.
Lal Bahadur earned almost £1,000 from selling radish seed this year, more
than 8 times higher than Nepal's per capita income.
Supporting industry reform
As well as helping individual farmers, the project has supported institutional reforms too. It has helped to:
- Establish the Seed Quality and Control Centre and the Seed Testing
Laboratory
- Strengthen the regulatory roles of the Nepal Government for quality seed
production
- Remove subsidies on fertilizers and seed.
- Commercialise the Agriculture Inputs Corporation, and to amend the Seed
Act and Regulations to bring these to international standards.
Nepal currently meet 75% of the country's demand for vegetable seed, 50%
percent of which is met by farmers that DFID has supported. The demand for
vegetable seed is growing by 10 percent per year.
For the seed industry in Nepal to sustain and expand, it needs to improve its
access to, and increase its share of, regional and international markets. So,
the future of the industry very much depends on tackling this challenge.
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