UPPER DOLPA, NEPAL – For three years, the Nepalese government has stopped delivering rice to parts of Upper Dolpa, a district bordering China. Therefore, people here have to walk four to nine days to buy rice at the market, at prices that most cannot afford.
Rice costs 150 Nepalese rupees per kilogram (US$0.50 per pound) in the market – up to 2.5 times what it cost when rice was delivered to their area, at 58 to 87 rupees per kilogram (20 to 29 cents per pound). .
But getting rice to Upper Dolpa is incredibly difficult.
“For us or a contractor to transport rice, we have to use mules or yaks. Or we have to use helicopters,” says Dorje Gurung, a local resident who only comes every few years. “We have lost hope that the government will transport the food.”
Every year the government signs a contract with a company to transport food to Upper Dolpa. Ideally, rice should be distributed around the area. However, for several reasons, including lack of transport facilities in Upper Dolpa, the contractor refuses to carry out the delivery despite a contract being in place. However, the “people of Upper Dolpa will get food this time.” “The food will reach Dolpa before the start of the snow season (December-January),” says Bishnu Ghimire, head of the Dolpa office of Food Management and Trading Co., one state-owned company that handles the contracts as part of its purchasing work Food and delivers them to remote areas of the country.
But Gurung is skeptical.
“Even if it arrives, it won’t even be enough for a month,” he says.
This is a widespread problem throughout Karnali Province in the mountainous and remote Himalayan region. So many people have left this region for the cities and to work abroad, leaving farms that could otherwise support them lying fallow.
Karnali is Nepal’s largest province, covering approximately 30,000 square kilometers (11,583 sq mi) – about 21% of the country’s total area. However, it has the smallest population at 1.6 million people. According to the 2021 census, about 42,700 people live in the Upper Dolpa region.
It is a harsh region with roads that are often impassable due to landslides and generally poor conditions. The 232-kilometer-long Karnali Highway is often in such poor condition that it is referred to as the “Death Road.” According to official statistics, an average of 100 people die in road traffic every year.
Despite the challenges of traveling to and from the Upper Dolpa region – and despite the region’s agricultural potential – over a quarter of the arable land lay barren in 2020. In response, the government launched a program that promised funds, seeds, and other support to increase agricultural productivity. They wanted to create thousands of new jobs and hoped to lure people who had migrated to the cities back to the region. However, even more farmland – 30% – remains unused today, according to a report from the provincial Ministry of Land Management, Agriculture and Cooperatives.
A big part of the problem is that there are still not enough people in the region to make the program successful, as many agricultural workers have migrated to urban centers, says Ramesh Khadka, the ministry’s information officer.
Farming in the alpine conditions that characterize this region requires more time and is more expensive than in other regions. “They earned their living through other means,” said Dhan Bahadur Kathayat, the ministry’s spokesman and agriculture expansion officer.
Karnali province has agricultural potential. Nine different varieties of grains and rice are grown here, including millet, barley and Jumli Marshi rice. Still, six out of 10 districts rely on imported food, says Kathayat.
Data shows that Karnali citizens require 344,324 tons (379,552 US tons) of food. The province is 23,434 tonnes (25,831 US tonnes) below that figure.
And people are hungry. More than a third are affected by short stature, which can be caused by malnutrition during pregnancy or childhood. Forty percent of children suffer from anemia. A 2019 study by the World Food Program and the Nepalese government found that about a quarter of households do not have enough food – and only 8% of households consume what they need. Hunger is an acute danger.
Navaraj KC, a local pediatrician, says malnutrition rates would fall if the Karnali region produced the food it can grow.
“The nutritional content of the food produced in Karnali cannot be produced elsewhere in Nepal,” he says. “If we can preserve this grain and increase production, we can be self-sufficient and produce a healthy workforce for the future.”
Nepal became a federal democratic republic in 2015, divided into seven provinces. Since then, successive governments have put forward many ambitious plans to improve agricultural production in Karnali Province. According to Binod Kumar Shah, Minister for Land Management, Agriculture and Cooperatives, there have been moves towards organic farming, youth farming programs, grants, plot unification programs, loan programs and more.
Now the government is relying on penalties: those who keep their land barren must expect higher taxes. Farmland is returning to the forest, says agricultural expert Lilaram Paudel, who has experience working in Karnali.
“We have to think about how we can generate income from them (the forests). For example, by making money from herbs,” he says.
Meanwhile, rice deliveries from other regions remain slow. Madhav Mishra, Birendranagar office manager of Food Management and Trading Co., says more than 105,000 quintals (11,574 US tons) of food has been distributed across the province and there will be no shortage this year.
But residents like Dil Kumari Dhimal don’t believe that’s true. The worst shortages occur during the festival season when demand for rice is high. Two major festivals, Dashain and Tihar, take place in October and November.
In recent years, she says, she left the food depot empty-handed and was forced to buy rice at unaffordable prices at the local market. The situation has been the same so far this year.