{"id":35175,"date":"2017-10-30T11:08:00","date_gmt":"2017-10-30T11:08:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-05-14T18:47:27","modified_gmt":"2020-05-14T18:47:27","slug":"10175-milk-to-meat-a-nepali-village-diversifies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/en\/food\/10175-milk-to-meat-a-nepali-village-diversifies\/","title":{"rendered":"Milk to meat: a Nepali village diversifies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Surrounded by the rocky lower-Himalayan mountains, the village of Chyamrangbeshi is returning to normal after the deadly earthquakes in 2015 – but in a different way to most. The village, known for milk-based sweets called "khuwa", now has fisheries and poultry coops for the first time in its history.
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\nChyamrangbeshi<\/span>, <\/span>Kavre, Nepal (Image: <\/span>Nabin <\/span>Baral)<\/span><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

“My son got the ideas from several NGOs who came here to help after the earthquake,” says Somnath Ghimire. In the village of about 50 families, most households rely on selling milk to the khuwa factories to provide income. “It’s a completely new business for us. It’s also what we'd never even thought we’d do, as we don’t eat meat.”<\/p>\n

There are now three poultry coops in the village and several fishponds, some of which have already started selling fish. It takes some time to stabilise fish ponds to a point where they can produce fish at a sellable scale.
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\nThe fish pond of Kamal Lama, who was the first in the village to start fish farming (image: Nabin Baral)<\/span><\/p>\n

“We had subsistence farming. We continued what our parents did but after the earthquake, several organisations advised us about different ideas that could regain our economic prospects in better ways,” says Ghimire. “We realised that diversifying our economy is important, because if something goes wrong in one business we will have other options.”
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