Around 66% of actively employed people adopt agriculture as their livelihoods strategy in Nepal and the majority of the rural population still comprises of poor and disadvantaged groups (DAGs)
[1]. Agriculture sector contributes 39% of gross domestic product (GDP). The situation is particularly difficult and challenging in the mountainous regions, where access to improved seeds, information, technological knowledge and required inputs remains extremely difficult, and where large numbers of farming families remain most vulnerable.
In Nepal, 78% of the total cultivated area under maize system in the hills is covered by maize crop. The common proverb in the hills of Nepal is
‘if there is no maize, there is no food’. This reflects the importance of maize for the food security and livelihoods of the poor and DAGs. Despite of large coverage of cultivable area by maize in the hills, the average productivity is quite low. The national average productivity of maize at the farmer’s level is only of 2.04 metric ton per hectare, which is even much lower in the hills (Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, 2006). Experiences have shown that only the use of improved seeds can increase the production by 20% at least but, as a matter of fact, the seed replacement rate is less than one percent. It shows the need to invest on adoption of wider dissemination strategy to improve production and productivity of maize variety in the hills along with variety development and maintenance.
SDC has been funding the Hill Maize Research Project (HMRP) since 1999. The first phase (1999-2002) was conceptualised as a research project directed towards developing and facilitating the dissemination of improved maize varieties and technologies for small-scale hill maize farmers. Based on encouraging results of the initial phase, the second phase of HMRP (2003-2007) focused on balanced intervention in both research and development, expanding the coverage of projects’ activities to more than 30 hill districts. The project was able to consolidate some achievements in strengthening partnership, fine-tuning of Participatory Varietal Selection (PVS), Community Based Seed Production (CBSP), validating and disseminating new technologies and integrating planning and monitoring tools to address gender equity and social inclusion (GESI). Furthermore, the HRMP introduced Small Grants Projects (SGP) for competitive biding open to both government and non-government partners. The third and final phase of 2008-mid-2010, aligned with Interim Development Plan of the Government of Nepal-GoN (July 2007-June 2010), will build on the achievements and experiences of phases I and II, particularly the resource and knowledge transfer from research to extension. The HMRP will put special emphasis on dissemination due to the urgent need to have wider outreach and promote the adoption of farmers selected varieties and technologies for the benefit of the poor and DAGs.
The overall goal of the project is “to have improved food security and livelihoods of the farm families in the hills of Nepal, especially of poor and the DAGs”. It is expected that by the end of project phase, improved maize varieties and technologies are adopted by at least 4,000 poor households (hhs), out of them 3000 hhs are from DAGs across 30 program hill districts of Nepal. It is also expected that farm level maize productivity in at least 50% of the participating household level is increased by 20%. This will be achieved through the dissemination and adoption of the farmers selected technologies linked with the identification of marketing opportunities and the promotion of more efficient seed policies.
[1] DAGs refers to the groups of economically poor that suffers from caste, gender and ethnicity based discrimination
