{"id":20005502,"date":"2013-02-22T11:16:35","date_gmt":"2013-02-22T11:16:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thethirdpole.net\/?p=5502"},"modified":"2013-02-22T11:16:35","modified_gmt":"2013-02-22T11:16:35","slug":"weather-changes-frustrate-nepals-farmers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/en\/climate\/weather-changes-frustrate-nepals-farmers\/","title":{"rendered":"Weather changes frustrate Nepal&#8217;s farmers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/nepal-farmers_144.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-5503\" alt=\"nepal farmers_144\" src=\"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/nepal-farmers_144.jpg\" width=\"144\" height=\"89\" \/><\/a><strong>Unpredictable weather\u00a0pushes <\/strong>farmers in Nepal deeper into poverty. Kieran Cooke reports from the Himalayan region.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Life has been good in the past few years for Saraswati Bhetwal, a farmer in the small village of Lanndhi, about 50 kilometres north of Kathmandu, Nepal\u2019s capital.<\/p>\n<p>Better road connections with the city mean farmers in the area have switched from subsistence agriculture and growing rice to cultivating cash crops like potatoes, cauliflowers and beans. More cash has led to increased educational opportunities, better access to health care and a general improvement in livelihoods.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThen, in early January, I saw frost on the ground\u201d, said Saraswati, who, as generally with women in Nepal, does most of the agricultural work. \u201cIt destroyed all the potatoes and hurt the other crops. For days I was so upset I could not go to the fields \u2013 we\u2019ve lost all we invested. It is very hard.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Saraswati, aged-46, is not interested in debates about\u00a0climate\u00a0change and whether the glaciers in the high Himalayas are melting. But she and other villagers do know that something strange is happening with the weather in this mountainous, landlocked country of 30 million people, the majority of them farmers\u00a0struggling on or below the poverty line.<\/p>\n<p>Lanndhi is among a group of low-lying villages tucked away on a valley floor with a year-round temperate\u00a0climate\u00a0\u2013 until now, a seemingly ideal area for vegetable growing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe never had a frost like that before\u201d, she said. \u201cThe weather is changing. The monsoon comes later each year. There are more warm days and more pests. And the winter rains are less frequent.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><b>Less predictable weather<\/b><\/p>\n<p>The Himalayas \u2013 the world\u2019s biggest and highest mountain range, stretching from Afghanistan and Pakistan in the west to Yunnan in southwest China in the east \u2013 are, together with the Tibetan plateau and surrounding mountain ranges, often referred to as \u201cthe Third Pole\u201d, containing more ice and water than any other area on the planet outside the Arctic and Antarctic. Overall it\u2019s estimated that about three billion people \u2013 more than 40% of the world\u2019s population \u2013 depend on the food and energy produced in the region\u2019s river basins.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhile measurements indicate the total amount of monsoon rainfall in Nepal has not changed, the timing of those rains has altered\u201d, said Dr Bed Mani Dahal of the Department of Environmental Science and Engineering at Kathmandu University.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOverall the number of days it rains is less than in the past. But when it does rain, the volumes are greater: violent downpours and hail can destroy crops. The weather is just not as predictable as it was before.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dr Dahal said that besides changes in weather patterns, farmers are facing another serious problem. The rush into cash crops in recent years has led to overuse of land and loss of topsoil. Increased fertilizer and pesticide use is polluting water courses.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe don\u2019t know when the rains will come or if there will be enough water. It\u2019s not like before\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Scientists say changes in\u00a0climate\u00a0are more evident in the Himalayan region than in most other areas of the planet. As part of a US$ multi-million programme funded by the Norwegian Government, the Kathmandu-based <a href=\"http:\/\/www.icimod.org\/\">International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD)<\/a> and two Norway-based environmental and scientific organisations (GRID-Arendal and CICERO) are seeking ways to help Himalayan farmers \u2013 particularly those living in mountainous areas \u2013 to cope with an increasingly uncertain future.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat\u2019s clear is that while villagers may not be aware of \u00a0the concept of\u00a0climate\u00a0change, they are seeing changes on the ground and are asking us what it is they should do\u201d, said Arun Shrestha, an ICIMOD project manager.<\/p>\n<p>Nepal has made considerable progress in recent years in developing its agricultural sector and improving overall living standards. Changes in\u00a0climate\u00a0could now threaten that progress.<\/p>\n<p>Saraswati Bhetwal looked at the black, dead stalks on hundreds of her potato plants. Compared with many farmers, she is relatively prosperous but said that with a failed crop and little spare cash, finding the money to invest in tubers and seeds for sowing next season will be hard.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFarmers have many problems\u201d, she said. \u201cNow we don\u2019t know when the rains will come or if there will be enough water. It\u2019s not like before \u2013 and it\u2019s just one more problem to deal with.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This article was first published by the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.climatenewsnetwork.net\/\">Climate\u00a0News\u00a0Network<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><em>Image by\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/ciat\/\">CIAT International Center for Tropical Agriculture<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Unpredictable weather pushes farmers in Nepal deeper into poverty. Kieran Cooke reports from the Himalayan region.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20000125,"featured_media":20005503,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[761],"tags":[50029567,17827,519],"hashtags":[],"country":[20000113],"class_list":["post-20005502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate","tag-agroforestry","tag-climate-adaptation","tag-climate-impacts","country-nepal"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.0 (Yoast SEO v26.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Weather changes frustrate Nepal&#039;s farmers | Dialogue Earth<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Unpredictable weather pushes farmers in Nepal deeper into poverty. 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