Contribution of integrated forest-farm system on household food security in the mid-hills of Nepal: assessment with EnLiFT model

Abstract

About half of the households in the mid-hills of Nepal are severely food insecure, and the development of agriculture and forestry sectors could hold keys to reduce food insecurity and achieve other sustainable development goals. This paper presents results from a bio-economic model, Enhancing Livelihood from Improved Forest Management in Nepal (EnLiFT), that estimates a Food Security Index (FSI) across six household types in rural Nepal simulating selected agroforestry livelihood interventions. The FSI is calculated as the ratio between household expenditure capacity and household poverty threshold based on the national per capita poverty threshold. Marketoriented timber production shows strong potential to increase food security across all household types with greater benefits accruing to land-rich households. For land-poor households, remittances from household members working abroad remains the strongest route to their food security despite the underutilisation of agricultural land due to adult male labour outmigration. A drawback of market-oriented timber production is the long-term nature of timber production. As EnLiFT assumes that timber can only be harvested from Year 9, complimentary livelihood strategies are required to address food insecurity in the short term. Complimentary agroforestry interventions with the strongest potential to improve food security include combined high-yielding fodder production and commercial goat production, and production of non-timber forest products. Commercial vegetable production does not improve food security because of the high input costs. Currently, farmers in Nepal cannot yet fully obtain the financial benefits of agroforestry due to the complex and unsupportive forestry regulations surrounding harvesting and marketing of planted trees. While land-poor households are seen to rely on foreign remittances for food security, it is argued that policies encouraging use of remittances to promote agroforestry businesses is needed.

Which Agroforestry Practice Is Beneficial? A Comparative Assessment of the Traditional and the Improved Agroforestry Techniques in the Midhills of Nepal

“…Similarly, [34,35] have also comparable evidence from Rajshahi that adoption of agroforestry practice is a reason for reducing. Encouraging farmers to adopt multipurpose and fast-growing species could increase production, which eventually narrow down the gap of supply and demand of forest products [24]. Our findings also matched with Rahman et al [39], who have reported agroforestry practice as livelihood solution and source of economic return to poor farmers, source of forest products, and the strategy of forest conservation.…”

“…e aim of agroforestry practice is to fulfill farmers' need of forest products along with agricultural and cash crops, which ultimately reduce human pressure on surrounding natural forest [24]. In our case also, contribution of both practices seems supportive in conserving forest situated nearby local village.…”

“…ough efforts are being made for the promotion of agroforestry practices, there is still a huge gap in identifying better agroforestry practice. Nevertheless, some studies on agroforestry have been conducted in Nepal such as contribution on households' economy [23], livelihood enhancement and food security [24], and satisfying households' requirements [25,26]. e studies conducted so far seemed insufficient to provide substantial backup to appraise better agroforestry practices.…”

Agroforestry for mountain development: Prospects, challenges and ways forward in Nepal

“…We see a better future of production of highly marketable and highly nutritive agroforestry-based specialty products. In Nepal, revisiting the agroforestry system through the lens of markets and building resilient communities is emerging (Aryal et al, 2019;Cedamon et al, 2019;Nuberg et al, 2019;Nuberg et al, 2018;Pandit et al, 2019), and a recent study showed an increase of income of the households (37-48% over the baseline) who adopted such practices (Pandit et al, 2019).…”

Pathways to forest wealth in Nepal

“…The steps of conducting the RSA are provided in Cedamon et al (2017a). In addition to this, a guideline for single tree selection based on Q factor was also developed as a guide in the establishment of selection systems trial plots (Cedamon et al 2018b).…”