Paddy production falls in west Nepal

Nepal’s remote far western districts have always suffered from food insecurity, but this year saw a significant decline in rice harvest which is expected to increase outmigration and malnutrition.

The shortages were recorded in just the three months after this year’s harvests hit the market and are attributed to unfavourable rains, people moving away from farming, shortage of fertiliser and other agricultural inputs, low market price for local rice, and lack of irrigation.

This was revealed in the International Rice Conference held by the Nepal government in partnership with Feed the Future and USAID in Kathmandu this week with the theme: 'Achieving self-sufficiency in rice for Nepal's sustainable economic growth'.

The conference highlighted investment in research and development, subsidised loans to farmers for fertiliser, machinery and raising import tariffs. But by far the greatest impact would be to increase the area under irrigation, especially in the more arid western mountains of Nepal which are chronically food-deficit.

Three-fourths of Nepalis depend on agriculture, which makes up a quarter of the GDP. About 20% of that comes from rice. Till 30 years ago, Nepal used to export rice, but the country’s population has doubled in that time, there is also a growth in numbers of people switching to rice in their diet, and a fall in production.

Although productivity has increased, the area of land under cultivation has gone down. Nepal imported rice worth Rs40 billion in 2020-21, up 64% from the previous year.

Productivity could be further increased if there was better irrigation, since 80% of farms depend on rain-fed agriculture. The climate crisis has made those rains more erratic.

Even if all of Nepal’s 30 million people ate rice, the country would theoretically need 6.5 million tonnes of rice per year, but Nepal imports 7.5 million tonnes. The spurt in rice import is also because of the demand from the burgeoning beer industry.

This time last year, industrial warehouses were full of rice. Now, most of them in Dhangadi and other market towns are empty. Karnali Province grows about 150 million kg of rice annually. However, production this year is down by 50%, says agro-businessman Om Prakash Agrawal.

As it stands, the shortage in supply has also meant that prices have increased. The price of short-grain rice has gone up from Rs42 per kg to Rs55, while the cost of long-grain rice has increased from Rs60 three months ago to Rs75.

Hari Shankar Thakur, owner of Thakur Agro Industries, says that the scarcity of rice in the market caused by the decrease in paddy production has exacerbated the supply shortage in the far western hill districts.

Read Also: The Karnali’s hunger emergency, Anita Bhetwal

“Current stocks indicate that unless the government intervenes, there will be a severe shortage of food in the Far West in another three months’ time,” adds Thakur. “But it seems like the government is unconcerned about how to meet the people’s demands for rice.”

The Nepal Food Corporation, which purchases paddy from Nepali suppliers every year to avoid food shortages in the country’s hill districts, began buying rice in November of this year as well.

Indeed, the Corporation unit in Dhangadi which last year set a target to purchase 4 million kg of paddy, aimed to buy 6 million kg this season at the government-allocated support price of Rs31.98 per kg. The market price of rice does not affect the support price set by the government.

The corporation established six purchase depots in the district to facilitate transactions. However, farmers stopped showing up to sell their rice in the depots in December because they prefer to sell their product at a higher price elsewhere than at the government-allocated price, corporation officials said.

So far, Dhangadi has bought only 1.87 million kg of paddy out of the targeted 6 million kg, says Angila Basnet, head of the Food Corporation in Dhangadi.

This means the paddy harvested will only produce 1 million kg of rice which will not even be enough to cover one week’s demand.

“It is impossible for our supply to meet the demand for rice in the far west,” says Basnet. “In fact, there is already a shortage of food in the mountains even though the paddy season is not over yet.”

Read Also: Nearly half of Nepali children still malnourished, Sonia Awale