Climate Change Impacts on Agriculture and Adaptation Strategies: A Case Study of Nepal

Running head: CLIMATE CHANGE
Climate change impacts on agriculture and adaptation strategies: A Case Study of Nepal
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CLIMATE CHANGE
Contents
Chapter 4: Food and Nutrition security in Nepal.............................................................................3
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
4.1 Food availability condition....................................................................................................3
4.2 Nepal’s agriculture structure and performance......................................................................4
4.3: Food and Nutrition security..................................................................................................6
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................11
References......................................................................................................................................13
Figures & Tables........................................................................................................................15
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Chapter 4: Food and Nutrition security in Nepal
Introduction
According to Wang, Woo-Kyun & Son (2017) the GDP rate of Nepal gets significant
contribution from agriculture which had been reflecting strong growth across South Asia at rate
of over 33% as reported during 2016. Also agriculture sector in Nepal has around 27% arable
land and 18% cultivated land which supports employment of over 60% of population in the
country. Also agriculture sector of Nepal consumes nearly 0.84% of total emery consumption. A
large section of Nepalese population relies on small household cultivation for their living. Like
specific low caste category families in Nepal maintain landholding with shared crop procedure
which does not produce significant quantity of cultivation for agriculture demand. As such there
persists poverty and inadequacy of access to nutrition and food which is expected to rise further
in shadow of current economic downfall scenario of Nepal. Moreover as result of climate change
the monsoons have become unforeseeable in characteristics and most of the time Nepal does not
get sufficient amount of rainfall as compared to earlier years; as such this low rainfall has
resulted to instable and unanticipated produce of crops which has further elevated the issue of
food insecurity in Nepal (Das & Bandyopadhyay 2015). In this chapter availability scenario of
Food and nutrition security in Nepal will be discussed with focus on food availability condition,
agriculture structure and performance.
4.1 Food availability condition
According to Gartaula, Patel, Johnson, Devkota, Khadka & Chaudhary (2017) the produce of
cereals in Nepal has been outmatched due to huge population surge and in reality the population
increase rate has been significantly larger than the rate of production rise in cereal crops since the
time of 1960’s. A contrast of average annual increase rate through decade of population and
production of cereals in Nepal reflects that the only period during which Nepal witnessed
production increase rate of cereal more than their rate of population rise was during 1981-90.
Impressively this was also the time which coincides simultaneously when Nepal was a prominent
importer of cereal produces. But after consecutive decades the production increase rate has
dropped significantly in Nepal. Moreover according to Joshi, Ji & Narayan (2017) rise in
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population had reflected a fall only during 2001-08 but yet it is much larger than their cereal rate
of increase and value of net cereal imports reflects a growing trend during the period. Further it
is observed that Nepal has become a net importer of fruits & vegetables since period of mid 90’s
and this shows that the demand for fruits and vegetable have been rising within Nepal but the
rise in domestic produce has not been capable enough to meet this demand. Also it has been
found that there is significant elevation in imports and notable drop in export of cereals and
fruits, vegetable during recent years specifically since 2000 onwards. Though this time coincides
with period of civil instability within Nepal so an in-depth evaluation is needed before inferring
if there is any direct association between the pattern observed previously in exports/imports and
the domestic political condition in Nepal.
According to Byg & Herslund (2016) although Nepal’s domestic generation of cereals as seen in
whole has not been matching with their rise in population within the nation but their per capita
availability of cereals does not reflect concerning fall and has in actuality drifted around 170 kg
per capita per year since the time of 90’s. Import of cereals is eventually the reasoning for
continuing a high availability which has been probable to Nepal’s liberal trade policies. The
tariff of agricultural products has been the lowest within South Asia since 2002 with no tariffs
charged on staples and no quantitative constraints on agricultural products. Although import of
cereals have eventually elevated, Nepal’s import dependency ratio had not been very alerting as
it reached just to 3.5% of overall domestic availability in 2007. While in context to value fruits
and vegetable form a greater share of Nepal’s imports compared to the cereals with fruits and
vegetables consisting of 22.8% of overall agriculture imports since 2007.
4.2 Nepal’s agriculture structure and performance
As observed earlier the contribution of agriculture in GDP of Nepal has relatively increased with
a considerable improvement rate as contrasted to other South Asian nations, which in 2015-16
was nearly 33% of total GDP of Nepal. However both Gross domestic product and GDPA in
Nepal reflects large variations. But in general the GDP and GDPA are likely to project a trend
which reflects the degree that determines agricultural sector of Nepal an overall driver of their
economic stability and development (Sada, Shrestha, Shukla & Melsen (2014) to interpret
performance of agriculture sector in this section the main sub factors of agriculture in Nepal have
been examined. According to Shah, Tachamo, Sharma, Haase, Jähnig & Pauls (2015) the value
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