With a significant drop in rice production this year, import bills for the staple food will see a whopping increase
Rice production this fiscal year of just 5.13 million tons, the lowest in the last five years, could badly affect Nepal's food security, forcing the country to depend more on food imports to meet local demand.
Rice production this year has gone down by 8.74 per cent, compared to last fiscal year, as three days of torrential unusual rains in October destroyed 424,000 tons of paddy grown on about 111,000 hectares of land, or about 7.5 per cent under paddy cultivation in the country, mostly in Sudurpaschim and Lumbini provinces. The damage to paddy, which contributes 7 per cent to the country's gross domestic product, was estimated at Rs 12 billion. For the last few years, Nepal had been seeing a steady rise in rice production, and a good harvest was predicted for this year as well, with acreage having increased by 4,000 hectares compared to last year – were it not for the offseason rains, wind and storm during the harvest season. Rice production had reached a high of 5.62 million metric tons last fiscal and 5.5 million tons the year before.
Despite the good yields in the previous years, Nepal still spends heavy sums on importing rice, which have kept increasing year after year. This has happened because, with growing road connectivity across the length and breadth of the country, people are abandoning the cultivation of highly nutritious crops like maize, millet and buckwheat and switching to imported rice. Also as income and living standards improve, the demand for aromatic long grain rice (Basmati) is ever increasing. Last fiscal year, Nepal spent Rs 50.48 billion importing rice, a 51.4 per cent increase over the previous year. With a significant drop in rice production this year, import bills for the staple food of the Nepalis will see a whopping increase. Nepal's per capita consumption of rice at 113 kg is higher than that of India.
Nepal has no alternative but to improve rice yield if it wants to feed its population and also meet the needs of its growing beer and alcohol industries. But there are a number of impediments to doing so. A perennial shortage of fertiliser before the plantation season, fake seeds, diseases and delayed or poor monsoon rains make the production volume of rice uncertain. Add to these the vagaries of the weather, as seen in October, and crop failures are a reality. Nepal's efforts to switch to hybrid rice have also not been successful. The decreasing paddy fields across the country, due to encroachment by unplanned urbanisation, is also becoming increasingly worrisome, with as many as 100,000 hectares having been usurped by roads and housing in the past one decade alone. Although about 70 per cent of the population still depends on the farm for their livelihood, agriculture has never been a priority of the government, with it paying no more than lip service to becoming self-reliant in agriculture production. It is apparent that the government's business as usual approach to tackling Nepal's problems seen in agriculture will not take the country much further. Only a combination of advanced plant breeding, agriculture inputs, mechnisation and innovative farming will help Nepal achieve food security.
Fertiliser factory
Every time a new minister takes charge of the agriculture ministry, s/he talks about forming a study team to explore the possibility of establishing a chemical fertiliser plant within the country. It may be recalled that the K P Oli-led government had also formed a panel to study the possibility of setting up a fertiliser factory, only to find that it is not possible without the uninterrupted supply of piped natural gas. Experts believe that the old technology of producing chemical fertiliser using electricity would be very expensive.
This time also, Minister of Agriculture and Livestock Development Mahendra Yadav has told a parliamentary panel that the government was carrying out a study to set up a fertiliser plant, which would require an estimated Rs 125 billion. However, none of the study panels comprising bureaucrats and experts have suggested how natural gas would be arranged to produce the chemical fertilisers. Rather than spending time unnecessarily, it would be better to produce manure fertiliser on a large scale by mobilising the resources used to import fertilisers.
For this, private sector can be encouraged to set up manure fertiliser industries by offering them adequate incentives.
A version of this article appears in the print on January 5, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.
