Collective farming has been suggested as a potentially useful approach for reducing inequality and transforming peasant agriculture. In collectives, farmers pool land, labor, irrigation infrastructure, agricultural inputs and harvest to overcome resource constraints and to increase their bargaining power. Employing a feminist political ecology lens, we reflect on the extent to which collective farming enables marginalized groups to engage in smallholder agriculture. We examine the establishment of 18 farmer collectives by an action research project in the Eastern Gangetic Plains, a region characterised by fragmented and small landholdings and a high rate of marginalised and landless farmers. We analyze ambivalances of collective farming practices with regard to (1) social relations across 106 Stephanie Leder et al. scales, (2) intersectionality and (3) emotional attachment. Our results in Saptari/ Eastern Terai in Nepal, Madhubani/Bihar, and Cooch Behar/West Bengal in India demonstrate how intra-household, group and community relations and emotional attachments to the family and neighbors mediate the redistribution of labor, land, produce and capital. We find that unequal gender relations, intersected by class, age, ethnicity and caste, are reproduced in collective action, land tenure and water management, and argue that a critical feminist perspective can support a more reflective and relational understanding of collective farming processes. Our analysis demonstrates that feminist political ecology can complement commons studies by providing meaningful insights on ambivalences around approaches such as collective farming.

The relationship that mountain communities have with global capitalism are complex, being mediated by a diverse topography and ecology, both of which provide opportunities for capital accumulation, while also isolating older, "pre-capitalist" modes of production. This paper takes a case study valley from Nepal's eastern hills, tracing over two centuries of agrarian change and evolving interactions between "adivasi" and "semi-feudal" economic formations with capitalism. In recent years, the expansion of markets, rising demand for cash, and climate stress have solidified migrant labour as a core component of livelihoods, and the primary mechanism of surplus appropriation from the hill peasantry. Through a focus on three altitudinal zones, however, it is demonstrated how the trajectory of this transformation, including the interactions with persisting pre-capitalist formations, is mediated by both politicaleconomic processes and the local agro-ecological context.

Do farmers' collectives, which pool land, labour, capital, and skills to create medium‐sized production units, offer a more viable model of farming for resource‐constrained smallholders than individual family farms? A participatory action research project in Eastern India and Nepal provides notable answers. Groups of marginal and tenant farmers, catalysed by the project, evolved into four different collective models with varying levels of cooperation, gender composition, and land ownership/tenancy status. Based on 3 years of action research, this paper examines how the models evolved and their differential outcomes. All groups have gained from cultivating contiguous plots in their efficiency of labour and machine use for land preparation and irrigation, and from economies in input purchase. Several collectives of tenant farmers have also enhanced their bargaining power vis‐a‐vis an entrenched landlord class and thus been able to negotiate lower rents and refuse long‐standing feudal obligations. However, the models differ in their extent of economic gain and their ability to handle gender inequalities and conflicts over labour sharing. The paper explores the historical, regional, and cultural factors that could explain such differences across the models. It thus offers unique insights into the processes, benefits, and challenges of farmers' collectives and provides pointers for replication and further research.

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The most densely populated Terai Plains of Nepal with poor access to irrigation water in the dry season resulting the food insecure community. Several initiatives have been carried out to improve the irrigation facilities by extracting the ground water resources using solar, diesel, and grid operated electric pumps. Sustainability of all those initiatives and identifying the most viable solution is always in question. In this context, this study attempts to assess the cost effectiveness of these pumping technologies considering life cycle cost (LCC) in the context of Terai region of Nepal. Observation, Key informant interview (KII), in depth interview, and Focus Group Discussion (FGD) were conducted in 14 different sample sites to assess the performance of technology, life cycle cost and unit water cost (UWC) in different capacity utilization factors (CUFs), farmer’s perception, affordability, and profitability. The characteristics considered while selecting the sample sites were of size of pumping system, date of installation, beneficiary households, grid situation, solar vendor, implementing organization, major application of solar pumped water, and major cost associated. Low utilization factor of solar pumps has been observed in almost all sites. Solar pumps become expensive than diesel pump, if it is operated at less than 45% CUF. Grid operated electric pumps are found cost effective than diesel and solar, if gridline is near to pump site. If solar pump is operated at 10% CUF, the per unit water cost is NPR. 24.4, and the cost is reduced to NPR. 2.83, if it is operated at 90% CUF. Solar pumps need to be operated at least 700 hours per year to compete with diesel pump. The payback period for solar pump was calculated considering cost per unit of water at three different price NRs 5.51, 7.92, and 10 and found as 6.97, 4.1, and 3.14 year respectively for 70% utilization factor. High upfront cost of solar powered system, poor access to financing and technology seems to be hindering factor to popularize the system. Effective supply chain network, easy access to repairing service, introduction of cash crops instead of traditional crops, promotion of micro irrigation techniques, better access to finance and technology, operation of solar pump at high CUF through grid connection to sell/buy surplus/deficit energy, and subsidized price of solar operated irrigation technology could help to become solar powered techniques as sustainable option in near future to popularize and easy operation for irrigation water management in Terai Region of Nepal. However, Government needs to formulate and implement the policy for utilization and overexploitation of groundwater resources with expansion of solar, diesel, and electric operated pumps in near future to make groundwater resources sustainable.