Nepal must be smarter in its approach to agricultureWhat could be more bizarre than an agrarian economy ignoring its rampant soil erosion?
With cases continuing to rise every day, it’s obvious that we haven’t reached the peak of the pandemic yet, but Covid-19 and its multiplying effects have already pushed a large number of people into hunger and poverty in Nepal as measures to fight the crisis restricted movement and incomes. It’s also deepening pre-existing inequalities, affecting women’s lives disproportionately and differently than men’s. The actual scale of the multifaceted damage will not be clear until mobility resumes when lockdown measures are lifted completely, which will not happen soon. What’s more, there’s a high likelihood of a second wave of the virus in the coming winter. Regardless of when it will all end, Covid-19’s impacts will be far-reaching and complex. Amidst this, the most fundamental responsibility of the economic sector will be to rebuild livelihoods for millions, and in the process continue to revive the economy. It is worth noting that even developed countries have started calling for wholesale reforms of the food system, to avoid any sustained crises in the post-Covid-19 era.
The national budget for the fiscal year 2020-21 has recognised the urgency of addressing economic challenges. It has emphasised actions for the revival of the economy and employment generation through the mobilisation of labour in the agriculture sector—a reliable economic base. The budget also aims to encourage farmers to utilise available land to maximise production, by allocating additional resources for irrigation, fertiliser, seeds, finance, technology and market. However, under the given near-stagnant conditions of agriculture and in view of rapidly growing climate risks, these expectations may prove unrealistic.
Of course, the current crisis has provided an opportunity to rejuvenate agriculture to not only benefit a majority of our people but also to strengthen the economy for many years to come. However, we can’t expect different results when we apply the same approach. There are some fundamental issues such as land degradation continually being ignored, and some new ones manifesting from the changing climate. We can’t afford to ignore them anymore if agriculture is to be rejuvenated.
Addressing land degradation
The foundation of agriculture is land, which is significantly degraded in most parts of the country due, largely, to years of catastrophic and chronic soil erosion. Anna Krzywoszynska, a research fellow at the University of Sheffield, in discussing the crucial role that healthy soil plays in our lives, said ‘The only thing that stands between us and extinction is six inches of soil and the fact that it rains’. These measly six inches of soil provide 95 percent of our food. When the soil is gone, food is gone. Modern agriculture has been taking more out of the soil than it has been putting back in. As a result, our soils, especially in the hills and river valleys may as well be considered life-less.
What could be more bizarre than an agrarian economy rooted in a young and growing mountainous landscape of the Himalayas ignoring its rampant soil erosion? Unfortunately, this has been constantly ignored by our development policies and, most importantly, our agriculture policy. Soil helps regulate the Earth’s atmosphere and is an excellent carbon sink. Managing soil could play a big role in tackling climate change. Yet, it hasn’t received attention in the way other climate actions have.
Soil erosion is a much-talked-about subject in the academic field of the environment but least-addressed by actions on the field. Paradoxically, planting trees is often recommended as an answer to this chronic problem without any evidence of how it helps reduce soil erosion resulting from agriculture farms. Had erosion been an issue at the centre of land management for agriculture, we would have developed our way of saving those six inches of soil to sustain food production. Sadly, we haven‘t.
Adapting to climate impacts
Covid-19 has hit us at a time when we were already grappling with the pre-existing burdens of floods in the Tarai and droughts in the hills, along with rising cases of insects, such as the fall armyworm infestation across both regions. It’s likely that we will also encounter the locust swarms sweeping through parts of India in the near future. Therefore, there is an urgent need to understand how the changing climate would compound these risk factors for agriculture, especially in the current context as our choices for economic revival are limited. It needs reiterating that Covid-19 is only intensifying climate impacts.
Rainfall patterns will continue to change, as it has in the last decades, affecting agriculture more than any other economic sector. On one hand, rising flood risks will continue to damage crops and farmland, while on the other, an increasing number of farms will remain fallow due to water scarcity. As a remedy to water scarcity, the budget has proposed to install 5,000 shallow and 247 deep tube-wells in the next fiscal year to increase irrigation coverage. However, in many areas in the Tarai, groundwater has fallen beyond the reach of average tube-wells. Changing rainfall patterns with more intense rains are no help to augment groundwater sources. Besides, the warmer climate will intensify water demand for food production. The post-Covid-19 agriculture plans must be flexible enough to accommodate these ground realities and provide remedies.
Support local governments
Local governments are responsible for managing agriculture including climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction. But they don’t have the required capacity nor the expertise to manage the climate impacts that often occur simultaneously even within a small geographical area. Unlike handling of Covid-19 itself, where we had the opportunity to learn from others’ mistakes, now we will have to assess for ourselves how droughts, floods, insects, diseases, warmer weather, and the likes impact agriculture across the diverse landscape of this country as well as what farmers can do to avoid the risk and adapt to the new situation. It will require a greater and more focused approach and perhaps some mechanisms and systems in place to support local governments in technical matters to assess, analyse, and respond to these simultaneously occurring problems than merely an increased budget or a few additional programmes.
At the end of the day, it’s farmers who need to adapt to the emerging realities. Therefore, development policies must be able to build confidence in them and encourage them to rethink the way they farm and initiate actions to improve soil health and address climate risks in order to make agriculture resilient to climate change, as well as ensure that post-Covid-19 agriculture does not further entrench existing inequalities in agriculture.