{"id":20008475,"date":"2014-07-09T11:57:06","date_gmt":"2014-07-09T11:57:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thethirdpole.net\/?p=8475"},"modified":"2020-10-01T20:41:55","modified_gmt":"2020-10-01T15:11:55","slug":"nepals-farmers-wait-for-rain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/en\/climate\/nepals-farmers-wait-for-rain\/","title":{"rendered":"Nepal’s farmers wait for rain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Their eyes to the skies, farmers in Nepal look anxiously for signs of rain in a monsoon season that has been erratic at best. In a normal year, they would be busy planting rice<\/a> by the last week of June as the monsoon sets in. This time, however, it has yet to rain properly and the farmers, who depend almost entirely on the monsoon for water, are getting desperate.<\/p>\n

Though the government announced the onset of the monsoon<\/a> officially on June 20, most parts of the country are yet to receive good rainfall. It is part of the prevalent pattern all over South Asia this year, with the rainfall delayed or scanty in most parts of India and Pakistan as well. Meteorologists around the world have ascribed this partly to the resurgence of the El Nino phenomenon in the eastern Pacific Ocean, a phenomenon that weakens the monsoon winds that blow from the southern Indian Ocean towards Asia.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know why this delay in rainfall is happening but in recent years the monsoon prediction has been highly uncertain,\u201d said Ratna Darai, 47, a farmer in Daraipadhera area who has been praying for the rains so he can get on with planting rice.<\/p>\n

To make matters worse, pre-monsoon rainfall was also scarce, leaving farmers in trouble as they couldn\u2019t sow last season\u2019s rice on time (by April). \u201cThere was drought so we had to share the little water brought a long way from irrigation canals to the field. This delayed rice plantation resulting in a late harvest,\u201d explained Darai. \u00a0The delayed harvest in turn delayed this season\u2019s rice plantation.<\/p>\n

\u201cLife is becoming harder every year. It\u2019s beyond our control \u2026 we can\u2019t go beyond nature\u2019s rule,\u201d added Nir Bahadur Darai of the same village.<\/p>\n

Ratna and Nir Bahadur Darai are but two cases in point; their concerns find echo elsewhere in the Himalayan country.\u00a0 Eighty-year-old Chhabilal Bishwokarma, a blacksmith working near the highway in Damauli, has no land for farming but is worried at the trend of changing weather and upset farming schedules. \u201cWe used to plan a couple of months before for rice plantation\u2026 but maybe god is angry now so he is deceiving us,\u201d said Bishwokarma, who hasn\u2019t heard the term climate change but is able to discern the criticality of the concept.<\/p>\n

About 40 km from Damauli is the tourist town of Pokhara<\/a>, where farmers are also eagerly waiting for the rains. Gyan Bahadur Ale from Kamalbari, Tanahu, is amongst the lucky farmers whose field is near the irrigation canal. \u201cMy field is a bit like wetland that keeps water and also needs less water so I used irrigation water and planted rice on time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Irrigation is the key. According to the Nepal government\u2019s irrigation department, about 40% of the total land area in the country has irrigation facilities<\/a> at least for one season but only 15% land has round the year irrigation. \u201cFarmers have to depend heavily on rainfall for irrigation \u2026 a delay of even a few days affects the whole year\u2019s agriculture schedule,\u201d said Uddhav Adhikari, president of the National Farmers Group Federation.<\/p>\n

According to government figures, agriculture accounts for about 33% of Nepal\u2019s GDP. Of this, rice contributes a hefty 21%.\u00a0 The scanty rainfall spells trouble with officials estimating that only about 10% of rice had been planted till now. It was almost double at this point last year. \u201cInsufficient water due to weak monsoon is the reason for this; the monsoon rainfall was better last year than this year,\u201d said Ram Prasad Pulami, joint secretary at the Ministry of Agricultural Development<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Though reasoned as an effect of climate change by some, experts are unwilling to attribute the erratic monsoon solely to climate change. \u201cWe have seen changes but it\u2019s not uniform and the monsoon could be affected by many factors, including climate change. So, in general, yes, the prediction of monsoon has become tougher but available research and data is not enough to just blame it solely,\u201d said Rajendra Shrestha, former head of the Meteorological Forecasting Division<\/a> of the\u00a0 Ministry of Science, Technology and the Environment<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In his view, the dates of the arrival and retreat of the monsoon are not the only important factors; how the rainfall pattern changes within the monsoon period also counts. He agrees that the pattern is changing more rapidly. The normal onset date for the monsoon is June 10 for eastern Nepal and June 12 for Kathmandu, but this rarely happens.\u00a0 Weather experts say one week before or after is normal but the fluctuation<\/a> has been fairly high in the last decade.<\/p>\n

The scarcity of rain is compounded by the scarcity of labour. \u00a0\u201cEven if you have water, how will you plant rice? Most of the youth are abroad and you can\u2019t get even a few workers even after searching the village,\u201d said Laxman Gauli, 45, from Ranigaun village in Tanahu.<\/p>\n

Studies suggest more than 300,000 people migrate for work<\/a> from Nepal every year beyond India and about 30% of the households have at least one member of their family abroad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An erratic monsoon in irrigation dependent Nepal has thrown into disarray the rice plantation schedule, a critical factor in the country\u2019s agriculture based economy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20000200,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[761],"tags":[519,543,50040317],"hashtags":[],"country":[20000113],"class_list":["post-20008475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climate","tag-climate-impacts","tag-extreme-weather","tag-farming","country-nepal"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nNepal's farmers wait for rain | Dialogue Earth<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"An erratic monsoon in irrigation dependent Nepal has thrown into disarray the rice plantation schedule, a critical factor in the country\u2019s agriculture based economy.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, 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