Nepal to face chronic food grain deficit

In what is seen as a looming danger, Nepal is projected to face the severest food grain deficit during the current fiscal year starting on mid-July, a leading news media group's website reported Thursday.

The drought this season severely affected the sowing of paddy, the major cereal crop, and this has been mentioned as the main reason for Nepal possibly facing food grain deficit, eKantipur.com reported.

Preliminary estimates of the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives (MoAC) project a foodgrain deficit this year of around 350,000 tons.

The paddy production is projected to fall by 25 percent to 3.1 million tons, far less than last year's production of 4.2 million tons, the report added.

"In some places, the paddy planting was affected by drought, while in others, floods hit the cultivation," Aseshwor Jha, joint secretary at the MoAC was quoted as saying by the website.

"Moreover, the drought hit hard the paddy already planted," Hem Raj Regmi, senior statistician at the MoAC told the website.

Only 38 percent of paddy growing areas in Nepal have access to a reliable irrigation system and the rest depend on the highly precarious monsoon, he said.

Drought left around 10 percent of paddy fields barren. Paddy is normally grown on over 1.5 million hectares in the country.

Around 65 percent of Nepal's economically active population work in agriculture. Agriculture in Nepal suffers from several constraints: unpredictable weather, the poor performance of irrigation projects, and a feudal land tenure system, among others.

Every year Nepal faces chronic food deficits in the mountainous areas, especially in remote far-western districts, according to the report.

Source: Xinhua