Kathmandu, September 5

The House of Rajkarnicar, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Livestock Services are jointly organising the Agro Trade and Investment Conference 2017 in the Capital from September 14 with an objective to promote commercial agriculture in Nepal.

Organising a press conference today, officials of the House of Rajkarnicar said that the three-day event targets to facilitate the scale-up from subsistence to commercial agriculture and institutionalise a platform for interaction and exchange for all the stakeholders, beneficiaries, sellers and buyers of the agriculture sector.

“If Nepal is to meet the economic and agriculture sector goals under the Agriculture Development Strategy (ADS) or the millennial plan, the Nepali public sector and private sector along with the bilateral and multi-lateral institutions must aggressively promote commercial agriculture to make significant progress towards achieving those goals,” said representatives of the House of Rajkarnicar, adding that the conference will give a platform to stakeholders to discuss the prospects and challenges of agriculture sector in Nepal.

Similarly, the event also targets to support agriculture entrepreneurs (technically and financially) in the scaling-up to commercialisation, attract new investors and entrepreneurs to agriculture business and advocate and generate awareness for appropriate polices for the agriculture business.

The event will consist of two components — conference and exhibition. While organisers aim to create an interaction platform to support agricultural investors, entrepreneurs and farmers in providing technical and financial information and insights for commercial agriculture through the conference, the exhibition is aimed at creating an interaction platform to support buyers, investors, entrepreneurs and farmers in providing marketing and sales opportunities for commercial transactions of agricultural products and services.

Organisers have said that the event is focused on agriculture including aquaculture, horticulture, floriculture, poultry and apiary, livestock and cash-crop farming. Organisers have set ‘Progressing from Subsistence to Commercial Agriculture’ as the theme of the event.