Commercial vegetable farming picks up

Commercial vegetable farming can become a major source of livelihood for more in the coming days as 12 per cent households have been surviving completely on the commercial farming of vegetables, according to a survey.
"They are completely dependent on the commercial vegetable farming, which is encouraging," said director at the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), Agriculture Statistics Section Ambika Bashyal.
"However, 39 per cent of the households can survive for maximum of three months completely from the earnings of commercial vegetable farming,” according to Nepal Vegetable Crops Survey 2009-10 conducted by CBS for three months from Mangsir (mid-November) to Magh (mid-January) among 5,400 vegetable farmers across the country.
Almost half of the households have enough vegetables for their consumption. “Some 49 per cent of the households are self-reliant on vegetable as their production is enough for their consumption,” he said.
But the survey revealed that the over half of the vegetable farmers take loan from the informal sector. “Some 55 per cent of the farmers of the total five per cent, who depends on financial aid for farming, borrow from the informal channels and only 24 per cent borrow from the Agriculture Development Bank,” according to the survey.
The revelation could be an eye-opener for the banks and financial institutions.
Though 17 per cent of the total vegetable farmers are female, some 37 per cent female are involved in the selling of vegetables, it added. However, the majority – 73 per cent – of the farmers said they do not take any kind of technical help for the farming.
The total expenses on the vegetable farming stood at Rs 9 billion except labour and land lease charge. “Adding the labour and land lease charge, the total comes to around Rs 10.5 billion,’ according to the survey. “of the total expenses, seed, fertilizer and land takes half of the expenses that was 55 per cent at Rs 6 billion.
Vegetable-wise, expenses on cauli flower comes to around 18 per cent, followed by tomato at 14 per cent and cabbage eight per cent, Bashyal said, adding that the total production of vegetables stood at 28,20,527 metric tonne from 2,32,295 hectors of land in the fiscal year 2009-10. “Of the total 46,83,739 households in the country, 69.3 per cent at 32,43,521 households were involved in the vegetable farming.
”They have produced 4,04,580 metric tonne cauliflower, 3.17,657 metric tonne tomato and 3,02,067 metric tonne cabbage except other vegetables.
The first survey of vegetable farming will help the planners to develop strategy for the commercial farming in the coming year,” he added.