Food Security and Agriculure Development

This study assessed the farmers’ perception on climate change, estimated the determinants of and evaluated the relationship among adaptation practices using Multivariate Probit Model. A survey in 300 agricultural household, was carried out covering 10 sample districts considering five agro-ecological belts and vulnerability index. Four adaptation choices (change in planting date, crop variety, crop type and investment in irrigation) were deemed as outcome variables and socioeconomic, demographic, institutional, farm-level and perceptions variables were deployed as explanatory variables, and their marginal effects were determined for three climatic variables – temperature, precipitation and drought. Age, gender and education of HoH, credit access, farm area, rain-fed farming and tenure, are much influencing as compared to other factors. All four adaptation-options are found complimentary to each other. Importantly, intensity of impact of dependent variables in different models, and for available adaptation-options, is unequal. Therefore, policy options and support facilities should be devised according to climatic variables and adaptation options to achieve superior results.

In the background of volatile food insecurity situation and increasing imports of agricultural products, the Government of Nepal, through the policy and program speech and the budget speech in 2018, announced doubling the agriculture production in five years. Likewise, the Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) has also focused on doubling income and productivity of smallholder farmers. The paper attempts to evaluate the government’s target, whether it is achievable or an ambition by taking paddy as a case. An econometric model was employed for the study using secondary data. The data on paddy production, area coverage, irrigation, supply of improved seeds, total Nitrogen use and annual precipitation, from 2002 to 2016, were used to carry out the linear regression. The result indicates that the area is the major contributor to increase production with existing technology. However, realizing the limited scope of the horizontal expansion, except for winter and Boro-rice, the vertical expansion is the only option to achieve the goal. Likewise, increased production without a reduction in the cost of cultivation may induce "secondary economic complexity" as the cost of production in neighboring countries is significantly lower due to a huge government subsidy to farmers. Similarly, though econometric model suggests that a doubling of production is possible, the concern is whether the government can manage to allocate associated investment to achieve the target within given timeframe.