Drought and hunger drive Nepal farmers to India, defying ban
NARAINAPUR, Nepal: As an exceptionally wet monsoon season caused floods and landslides across much of Nepal, Buddhi Prasad Chaudhary, a farmer in the west of the country, was harvesting his rice early, after drought left it suitable only for animal feed.
Chaudhary, 27, uses groundwater supplies to grow some of the crops on his half-acre (0.2-hectare) farm in the Narainapur rural municipality of Banke district. But for a thirsty crop like rice, he depends on rain.
“It is almost impossible to grow rice using groundwater irrigation only,” said the farmer, who relies on rice farming to earn an income and feed his extended family of 10. “This year is the first time I have had to buy rice, as my harvest won’t be sufficient for my family for the whole year,” Chaudhary told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
An unusually dry monsoon season in Narainapur has ruined rice crops across the area, leaving thousands of farmers with so little food or income that some have broken a coronavirus travel ban, in place since late March, to seek work in India. Seasonal migration for economic reasons is common in the region - and when India imposed a strict lockdown to curb the pandemic, drying up casual jobs in cities, tens of thousands of Nepalese migrant workers returned home across the border.
Travel between Nepal and India is likely to be prohibited due to COVID-19 restrictions until at least next month. But Laxmi Kant Mishra, Narainapur’s crisis management chief, said many people were leaving illegally “as it is better to go to India and search for a job rather than die hungry here”. Arjun Singh Thapa, Nepal program officer at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said drought had become more frequent and erratic in the South Asian nation in recent years.
Farmers who could previously rely on monsoon rains from June to September now struggle to plan their harvests, while recurring dry spells have hardened the ground, he said. That means any rain that does fall cannot penetrate deep enough to adequately recharge groundwater supplies, he added.
The increasingly widespread use of chemical fertilizers has also inhibited the soil’s ability to retain rainwater, he noted. “In past years, crops would grow well even if we didn’t have sufficient rainfall for four or five months. But these days, 15 days of dry (weather) is enough to damage crops,” said Thapa.
Lack of irrigation
Agricultural experts say Nepal’s farmers have been dealing with worsening drought in recent years, pointing to climate change as a major driver. Roshan Babu Ojha, soil scientist at the Nepal Agriculture Research Council, a state body, said average temperatures in the country were increasing, while precipitation was declining, and variations in microclimates were becoming more dramatic.
“Consequently, some areas of the same district may face high rainfall while the others remain dry,” he added. Banke district sits within the major rice-growing Terai region and produces about 14 percent of the mid-west region’s rice, according to the 2017 agricultural statistical yearbook. — Reuters