Reporters Club: The central committee for the protection of the rights of Nepal Agriculture and Veterinary technology has announced a protest program against the appointment of agricultural and veterinary technicians by the government.

The committee has demanded the continuation of the one village, one technical program which was introduced back in 2015. Organizing a press conference at the Reporters Club on Sunday, the committee stated that they will organize a strike from the 23rd to the 27th of September, and they also have various sit-in programs planned for the various days.

Speaking in the program at the Reporters Club its general Secretary Man Bahadur Rawal stated that they have to continue with the one village one technical program. He said that the current decision to amend this program was not right for the people and the decision was wholly flawed.

Since 2015, remote villages have been getting public service through appointment under the technical program after completing all required formalities listed by the Public Service Commission.  It was passed by the Council of Ministers back then and 1500 agro technicians and 3000 in veterinary were placed at different remote locations for service in Nepal.

According to the latest ruling taken out by the Government it has planned to scrap the 3000 people serving in veterinary and changed the procedures that will allow only 740 people to serve at the local level.

It has further not specified that where the 740 people will be placed either in agriculture or in veterinary causing added confusion. This decision was taken by the Ministry of Finance according to their latest circular which has not gone down well with the committee putting thousands at risk of losing their jobs.

Moreover, there is further dissatisfaction over the allocation of the budget for the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry. It has appropriated only 300 million Nepalese rupees (NRs) whereas the required budget is over 1 billion Nrs.

The people who are in dire conditions at the mouth of the nation’s biggest festivals have thronged in the Capital to protest over losing their jobs and also not receiving remuneration for their work they have rendered thus far.

The removal of local-level staff will be affecting the country’s agricultural sector and only very few will remain in employment which will be a big burden.

Along with secretary Rawal, speaking at the program against the government’s decision were Janak Bahadur the President of the Nepal Animal Health Services Technical Association, Devraj Gauli, President of Nepal Agricultural Technology Association, and Dambar Bahadur Bam acting Chairman of Nepal Para-Veterinary and Livestock Association. The team has requested to scrap its decision that will gravely affect their industry.

In the press conference, they stated that the decision of the Ministry of Finance will affect not only the employees but all the farmers. They have also opined that contractual employees should continue with the service facilities until the permanent staff arrives.

The team has requested the Finance Ministry to scrap its current decision regarding one village one technician program. They will continue protesting and have requested the Prime Minister and other Ministers to listen to their concerns through a letter that is submitted to them.

MAKING MORE AND BETTER GINGER CROPS MEANS MORE INCOME

By Michelle Kovacevic

Nepal is the fourth largest producer of ginger worldwide and the sixth largest exporter. Ginger represents the country’s most important spice export, with exports in 2008 worth US$8.2 million.

The low-lying plains of the Morang district in southeastern Nepal should be the perfect place for growing ginger. The weather is warm, the soil moist.

And yet farmers there have been routinely losing up to 90 percent of their ginger crops.

Parbati Magar was one of the farmers who witnessed her entire ginger crop wither and die, season after season, from a disease called rhizome rot.

“I had no knowledge of [how to treat] this problem,” she said. Neither did the extension workers visiting her village. So Parbati decided to quit farming and found a job in a nearby village to make enough money to provide for her five children.

Indeed, many of Nepal’s ginger producing regions saw farmers shifting to different businesses or reducing their ginger cultivation in response to such post-harvest loss problems. Those who continued to cultivate some ginger were selling it at low prices to intermediaries due to the fact that it was poor quality and covered in dirt.

“Small-scale ginger farmers, many of them women with few other income-generating opportunities, were disconnected from markets, and unable to meet international standards and benefit from opportunities to increase their incomes though trade,” said Marlynne Hopper, Deputy Head of the Standards and Trade Development Facility (STDF).

The STDF, in partnership with the Enhanced Integrated Framework (EIF) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, saw an opportunity to support and grow Nepal’s ginger industry.

QUALITY AND QUANTITY

One of the first things they chose to do was to equip farmers with the skills, knowledge and confidence to produce higher quality and quantities of ginger.

They followed the farmer field school approach, training 59 lead farmers across eastern Nepal to manage pests and diseases, care for seeds, handle and store ginger after harvesting, and keep accurate records. These farmer facilitators then mentored other farmers in their district to apply the newly learned skills and knowledge, using drama, video and visual aids to get messages across in communities with low literacy levels. Farmers were also supplied with improved planting materials.

When she heard about the farmer field school coming to her village, Parbati was skeptical at first, as she didn’t see how it would help fix her rhizome rot problem. She decided to participate in the training, joining a group experimenting with new methods and techniques to manage rhizome rot in a demonstration plot.

“[After treating the ginger seeds], the problem was not as severe as before,” she said. Equipped with the knowledge, skills and networks she needs to succeed, Parbati has decided to try cultivating ginger again.

In neighboring Jhapa district, farmer facilitator Mahesh Timsina saw farmers also overcome similar challenges that had previously led them to abandon ginger farming.

“Previously known ginger pockets in Jhapa have again revived ginger production,” he said.

Using the farmer field school approach, nearly 2,000 farmers were trained (60 percent of them women), and losses of ginger after harvest across the field sites in eastern Nepal decreased by 30 percent.

FIRST OF ITS KIND

The next challenge to be tackled was the low quality of ginger being exported, leading to lower prices for Nepali ginger on the world market.

Nepal is the fourth largest producer of ginger worldwide and the sixth largest exporter. Ginger represents the country’s most important spice export, with exports in 2008 worth US$8.2 million.

However, farmers were unable to access higher-value markets in the region and beyond, given their inability to meet international standards recognized under the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures, which sets out the basic rules for food safety and animal and plant health standards.

Working together with the Nepal Ginger Producers and Traders Association (NGTPA) and several government ministries, a ginger washing facility – the first of its kind – was built, with the capacity to wash 18 metric tons of export quality ginger per hour.

“The washing facility is a milestone in our export development… it’s enabled us to increase ginger exports by 20-30 percent,” said NGPTA secretary Hemanta Bohora.

Along with the increased exports have come new buyers.

Hopper said, “The washing facility along with improvements in ginger production and post-harvest handling at the farm level, and increased sanitary and phytosanitary measures [SPS] and capacity of government authorities, has opened up access to new markets. In 2018, Nepalese ginger was exported to Bangladesh and Europe.”

FINDING A PATH FORWARD

Due to these increases in ginger productivity, reduced costs of cultivation and export quality, farmer income has increased by 62 percent.

Most farmer field schools are still in operation, with demonstration plots becoming seed resource centers and providing higher-quality planting materials. Extension agents supporting farmers like Parbati are up-to-date with the latest information and are utilizing training materials to reach even more farmers.

Perhaps most importantly, it’s taught Nepali ginger farmers how to be resilient in times of crisis.

EIF Executive Director Ratnakar Adhikari said, “This project shows that practical, country-owned initiatives like this can produce significant pay-off in terms of poverty reduction and is worth replicating in other parts of the country. Scaling up training on good agriculture practices to cover all ginger farmers and providing them with quality seeds are critical to enhance productivity as well as enhance the quality of ginger.”

Said Ganesh Pokharel, a farmer-facilitator from Panchthar district, “Ultimately, it has opened our eyes and placed new innovations in our hands. It has taught us the art to find a path when in the crisis that we can apply in the future as well.”

(This article was previously published in Trade for Development news under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0))

KATHMANDU, June 30: Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli has said modernization of agriculture was imperative to reduce unemployment in the country.

Modernization of agriculture creates new jobs, so improvement and commercialization in agriculture is the present need, he added.

Inaugurating the National Labor and Employment Conference 2019 in the capital on Sunday, PM Oli said, “Nepal’s agriculture is traditional- production is low, land small and unorganized. So, with modernization, people need to be attracted to agriculture. Agriculture needs to boost industry and trade.”

Mentioning that a large number of youths was bound to leave the country for lack of jobs here, he urged all concerned to retain youths, creating attractive jobs- dignified work, proper wage. Employment is not a mere occupying in a work but creating jobs for others too, the PM stressed.

According to the PM, the time has come for ensuring jobs to educated people. The educational certificate must be a tool to solve the unemployment problem. Education useful to life is essential.

WANT TO WORK TOGETHER WITH OPPOSITION.

The government is yearning for development by working together with the opposition.

“The country is common, we need to work by collaborating with the opposition,” he said, wondering, “The opposition might not have liked the government. But, can’t we work together for development?”

The government wants to free people from poverty and paucity.

“We must not make the future generation face the same difficulty we have. I ensure the utmost positive results during my tenure. I’ve a resolution for change,” PM Oli committed.

He believed that the conference would identify problems in the employment sector and recommend a suggestion for the solution.

On the occasion, Minister for Labor, Employment and Social Security, Gokarna Bista, said it was a challenging task to make the informal sector formal since a majority of the employment sector was in the informal sector.

Stating that the development of technology, climate change and demographic change had affected the world’s labor market in a new way, Bista underscored the need to move forward in a new day to tackle the growing burgeoning challenges.

According to him, the government had declared to provide employment opportunities to additional 500,000 people in the current fiscal year for which he pressed for collaboration among the local, provincial and federal government as well as the private sector for job creations in the country.

Similarly, Nepali Congress leader and former Minister Ramesh Lekhak opined that if the conference would help identify the prospects of employment opportunities in the country, it would create jobs for those yearning for betterment.

Lekhak pressed for promoting domestic employment to replace foreign employment. He spoke of the need to promote industrialization and attract foreign investment in the country.

The leader from the major opposition party said, “Nepali Congress would support every positive program that the government forwards.” Secretary at the Ministry of Labor, Employment and Social Security Mahesh Prasad Dahal said during the two-day conference, discussions would be held on various aspects of employment, Nepali labor market, work culture, entrepreneurship of Nepali youths and development of skills for employment among others. RSS