Date: 19 August 2022
As the Secretary of Pandit Community Forest of Jhyanku, in Dolakha district in the mid hills in Nepal, 26-year-old Mingma Chhoki Sherpa has been working voluntarily to improve the conditions of the community managed forest for the last couple of years. She was inspired to join the management committee in 2018 as the members had not been so active and she wanted to change that.
Her continuous coordination with the Division Forest Office has successfully resulted in the plantation of valuable Argeli plants in different patches of the forest, which will ultimately be used to make high value paper. She is now looking forward to the renewal of operational plan of the community forest and has already completed the boundary survey of the forest. This youth leader has become a motivational force in the Jhyanku.
Date: 19 August 2022
Aang Tendi Sherpa operates a wintergreen distillation unit in a small but picturesque village of Jhyanku, in the Dolakha mid-hills in Nepal. He started working at the distillation unit around 25 years ago as a laborer and now is the plant manager, and is also running the plant by himself as a full owner. When he started, the price for wintergreen was 50 paisa per kilogram, but now it has risen to Rs. 15 per kg. For each kg of wintergreen he buys from the primarily women collectors, he pays a royalty of Rs. 1 to the community forest. He said that he sells wintergreen oil at Rs. 5,500 per liter making a profit of roughly Rs. 3000 per liter. The dwindling supply of wintergreen leaves – the main raw material – has been one of the greatest challenges for him. COVID- 19 did not impact his business directly; but he says that there has been lack of capital ever since.
Date: 30th May 2022
The active involvement of women in vegetable farming and marketing at Jagata is comparatively higher than that of other production areas of Arghakhanchi district in western Nepal. These women, who are the small-scale vegetable sellers of Jagata, regularly carry their fresh seasonal vegetables to the Sandhikharka – Gorusinge highway at about 2-3 km distance from their village.
Their targeted customers are the passengers on the highway and they stay there until their products are all sold. They also sell their produces in the local weekly haat bazaar.
Through vegetable production and local marketing, these women have been able to provide economic support to their families, in addition to shouldering most of the household level care giving work.
Date: 11th March 2022
These energetic and vocal Dalit women from Kimdanda in, Arghakhanchi have small landholdings and also rear some livestock. Due to their land sizes, they are able to rely on agriculture only for sustenance and not for commercial purposes because of this reason. Most of their husbands work as foreign labour migrants, which has been an important source of livelihoods, even though it has meant less labour as home to work the fields. The milk from the livestock that they have could have been a good additional source of income for them, but they are not able to sell the milk due to the age-old tradition of discrimination of being from a so called “untouchable” caste – their Dalit status. There are about 25 Dalit households in Kimdanda and the women shared that although they are not excluded from women’s groups meetings and other community engagements, the other caste groups sit separately when it comes to time to share a meal or snacks after the meetings. Caste-based discrimination continues to plague the Dalit community in Kimdanda despite it being punishable by law.
A preparation for the orientation and interaction program for the establishment of the demonstration plot for legume cultivation to be run by the farmer’s field school was held in Ramechhap-5, Rampur. A total of 14 women and 4 men lead farmers and shareholders participated in the program. The program was facilitated by ARIA consultant Buddhiraj Tamang and agricultural specialist Premraj Bhatta. Information was first collected about the legumes farmed in the area, which included rajma (red, spotted and yellow), rice beans (black, baghe(tiger-spotted), white), horsegram (red, black, rough), green beans (white and black-eyed),black pulses (smooth and rough), peas and soybeans. Participants shared that based on the height of the farming plots, legumes are planted as winter crops from the month of May/June to mid-September and harvested from November-January.
Similarly, Char Ghare Bhanjyang (Bhim Bahadur Shrestha’s farm), Rithabot (Sarkini Tamang’s farm) and Dadatol (Sujata Tamang’s high altitude farm) were chosen as farming demonstration plots for kidney beans and horsegrams, green beans and high altitude kidney beans respectively. Following the information collection and plot assignments, agricultural specialist Premraj Bhatta gave an orientation session on land preparation, fertilizer use, weeding, pest and disease control, storage, and best practices for legume production.
Date: 12 March 2022
The farmers in Kolonger, Rampur village in Ramechhap have to leave their lands bare after harvesting legume crops in December, due to the lack of irrigation facilities to plant new crops.
This constraint is common for the mid-hill region of Nepal; farmers have to look to the sky before planting.
Farmers start to tillage the land in early March if there is enough rainfall. During the time when this photo was taken, the winter monsoon had already started so the farmers were preparing the land for maize cultivation. They had placed little mounds of compost manure (gothemol) after the initial tillage in the fields; they will be mixing it properly with the soil during second tillage or just before planting the maize. Gothemal is composed of animal dung, and plant twigs, waste grasses and leaves (collected from the forest to use as a fodder and mat for animals). Later, that is buried in the pit and used as compost manure. The twigs and leaves are rich in Carbon and grasses are rich in Nitrogen whereas animal dung is a good source of Nitrogen and Phosphorous. People in Kolonger Rampur say that they do not use chemical fertilizers in legumes but use a little amount of urea for the maize plant.
