Why agricultural development is sluggish in Nepal?

Since ancient time, agriculture came on spotlight as god gift to sustain daily life, the only way to live. Cultivation of wild crops, hit-and-trial for identifying edible crops, plus identifying best method to cultivate were major enhancement happened at that time. In this way, our ancient forefather/ancestors have paved the way for today's modern agricultural system. In addition, since the ancient time, we have history that human existence became successful because of the agriculture. And in today's modern era agriculture has same value for human being. We can not imagine human life without agriculture, agriculture and human life goes together. 

Comparing from ancient agricultural development in this world, everything has been changed now. Today's agricultural development is far more developed in developed countries. Even in the countries where they are highly concerned with other materialistic development,  countries where they do not have enough cultivable land and enough irrigation water; they are also stepping very far forward in exporting agricultural goods worldwide. Only few countries in this world are now dominating for exporting and covering thir world with their agri-brand.

Even agriculture is inherited in Nepalese society  from ancient forefathers by generation by generation, however, it is not stepping forward enough, it is not growing robustly even after a long span of time. 

Why agricultural development is sluggish in Nepal?

A. Concept of agriculture work

The concept of agriculture for modern Nepalese youth as 'muddy work'. Concept for agriculture is taken as low level work in Nepal. Most of the new generation people have either 'haterade' or 'low class work' feeling for agriculture, so new generation always want to be away from agriculture work.  The general tradition to teach the young children toward agriculture is always come as low class work, when child do not study well in class, their parents used to tell them 'if you do not study well you have to do agricultural work in field' as punishment. The misleading concept as 'agriculture very low and poor class work' is leading labour scarce in agriculture because most of youth do not want to work in agriculture but tend to remain unemployed rather.  People working in agriculture is usually do not get appreciation, he/she usually looked as derogatory. 

B. Value of agriculture in business/ agri-business

First concept in Nepalese society is to be a employee for government work and/or non-government work. The concept of being self employed and becoming business owner is a emerging concept in Nepal. Most of the youth have aim to become an employee than become a business owner. Even if some people put value for self employment and business, they used to think over materialistic business such as hardwares, cloth stores and groceries. Agriculture is not taken as industry in Nepal. whereas agriculture is one of the important economic industry in most of the developed countries including Israel, Korea, China, US, Australia and japan.  It is already proven and verified as agriculture is small scale to large scale business globally and there are many successful agricultural brands exporting products globally such as Sunrise Rice in Australia and Fuji apples from japan. However, Nepalese do not have enough understanding about agribusiness. 

It looks like Nepalese people do not put enough/much value in agribusiness. In most of the case, business is dominating by materialistic things and Nepalese people easily perceive that agriculture is not a business. Until and unless agriculture is commerialize, only then it can revolutionize. 

C. Personal Land ownership and fragmentation

Nepalese society has personal land ownership and have culture to divide land into their offspring. It is fragmenting cultivable land and making uncomfortable for agriculture land. Nepalese society put high value for owning an individual and personal RCC house, which is creating pressure over cultivable land as people want to make house on their land to look more prestigious. People already used to have small land and it used to get fragmented over siblings and converted into RCC building. This trend is very high in developed cities and plains. The plains and developed cities such as kathmandu and Pokhara are highly known for fertilized soil, however, current trend to make big RCC building by fragmenting lands are swallowing up our available cultivable land. 

D. No efficient research in agriculture

Most of the research organizations are still working on screening and understanding of agrosystem. The government research organizations are highly focused on very basic research i.e. screening. And for similar kind of research is autonomously doing by farmers in field. Farmers do not have efficient  and proven technology/support to implement in farm, what they  are doing is hit-and-trial for what could be suitable in their farm. And government research is not moving forward than farmers trial, it looks like almost similar as both farmers and research institutions are doing similar research i.e. screening and hit-and-trial.  Theres is very few and/or very inefficient research doing in commercialization level. First, there are very few labs and research organization working on agriculture research, second they do not have enough resource and third most of the research organizations are working mostly on screening, understanding.  

E. Very poor physical and research support from Government

Research and material support to farmers is always play a crucial role in boosting agriculture. However, the support from government such as fertilizers, research, technology support and management system of irrigation is always negligible. Poor value towards physical support such as irrigation system, health seeds and healthy seedlings are making farmers frustrating. Nepal has many way to support irrigation water as it has many natural water resources, however, there is always management fault, management priority at government and governance level at all time. Accessing healthy seed, seedling and fertilizers always used to be government burdon and low priority. 

F. Poor participation from Non-government sector

We can hardly can see private sector involving in agriculture research in Nepal, in addition, industrialization of agriculture from private sector have not come in spot light. Poor prioritization and puting poor value towards agriculture industrialization from private sector is one of the cause to left our agricultural system behind. 

G. Theoretical Study 

Teaching institutions and Universities for agricultural studies in Nepal run program in theory only. As agriculture is more practical study than theory, however, teaching institutions and Universities are focusing more on high volume of students with low and/or no practical studies. Some practical studies covering by these institutions are not enough, not efficient and/or sometime not relevant. Most of the practical studies are only for developing understanding and foundation only, which can not reflect in future if you wish to implement in real work in agriculture. 

H. Leaking potential brains 

Most of the students prefer to go abroad to study and work there as there is very low and poor value for agriculture in Nepal. Most of the foreign countries such as US, Europe and Australia are putting more values in agriculture, therefor, most of the valuable brains are draining abroad in search of better career opportunity and Nepal government is not becoming able to capture them within Nepal. 

I. Brokers dominating market

Nepalese market is dominated with brokers in most of the sectors including agriculture. Even if farmers are running business and do have enough marketable production, they have sell their products to brokers. In many of the cases, the small scale business have to face brokers. The mushrooming of brokers (in some case illegal and/or not registered) are dominating market. There is no direct selling and no direct marketing for agricultural products in market. Farmers and agri-business owners at production stage have to depend on brokers to define product price. There is no self governance in farmers who can decide their own product price, bitterly, they have to depend on brokers, ultimately brokers are earning more than farmers and customers paying high price. There is no control in marketing, it is growing heavily with brokers and there is unhealthy competition between brokers. It is making farmers more humiliated and depressed as they can not control market for their own production. 

J. Poor insurance policy 

Even there is little bit of understanding for insurance in dairy business, it is just emerging concept of plant insurance.  It is true that Nepalese farming system is highly affected with natural disasters such as landslides, flood, drought and disease/pest  outbreak. However, there is no even minimal effective insurance policy to protect farmers investment.  There is little bit of prioritization provided to cattles and fisheries industries, however, if we come to cereals and vegetables, there is no and/or negligible insurance policy which obviously do not encourage new entrepreneurs to come in agribusiness. 

K.  Less encouragement scheme for youth in agri-entrepreneurship

The potential young youths are first not interested to come in agri-business, secondly there is no effective entrepreneurship program and scheme designed for agriculture. very less prioritization and less encouragement for youth to come in agri-entrepreneurship obviously creates gap in quality agri-business and quality farming. In one side, there is higher rate of youth unemployment and in other hand there is no quality and healthy growing agri-business, in addition agriculture is seeking for technical youth to work. But there is more interest and prioritization in foreign employment rather. Technical youth are draining because of less and poor encouragement scheme toward agribusiness. 

L. Poor governance in Farmers 

M. Cereals and vegetable dominating farming system