Arable land on the decline: Agro census

The National Statistics Office has released the results of the National Agricultural Census, 2078 BS on thursday.

According to the Census, a total of 4,130,789 farmer households in Nepal are involved in agriculture-related work on 2,218,410 hectares of land. The previous agricultural census, 2068, showed that 3,831,093 farming families were involved in agriculture on 2,525,639 hectares of land.

Similarly, 62 percent of all households in Nepal are farmer households, which was 71 per cent in the previous census. The office has been conducting agricultural census every 10 years since 2018 BS. This is the first agricultural census after federalism was adopted as a form of governance in the country.

The latest census shows that irrigation facilities are being used by farmers on 1,209,265 hectares of land. Out of the total land under the ownership of the families, 54.5 percent of the land is used with irrigation. The area of land with irrigation facilities was only 52 percent in the previous census.

As in the previous census, food crops were found to have been cultivated in 2,586,183 hectares, while pulses are grown in 199,844 hectares, oil seeds are 180,141 hectares. Likewise, vegetable crops are grown in 107,733 hectares.

In the past 10 years in Nepal, farmer families raising livestock have increased from 3,353,857 to 34,05,014. According to this census, the number of cattle is around 4.6 million, the number of buffaloes is about 2.9 million, the number of goats and sheep is about 1.42 million, the number of pigs is about 1.4 million, and the number of chickens is about 45.1 million.

Meanwhile, the Agricultural Census, 2078 has shown 1,639,000 farmers are using tractors for agricultural work against the number 845,000 in the previous census ten years ago.

A total of 42,008 farmer families are engaged in fish farming in 48,763 ponds while 196,854 farmer families are keeping bees in 510,414 hives.

Furthermore, 182,441 (4.4 percent) farmer houses have mentioned that they have got agricultural insurance, of which 153,962 (84.4 percent) have insurance for livestock.

According to the results obtained from the census, 308,500 (7.5percent) farmer households have received government subsidies, with 46.2 percent getting it in the purchase of chemical fertilizers.

The census showed that 70.4 percent of the farmer households' main source of income is agriculture. The previous census showed this percentage at 83.1.

Out of the total farmer households, 26 percent of the families said they are engaged in other economic activities in addition to agriculture. This percentage was 16 in the previous census held in 2068 BS.