Country has enough foodstock for this fiscal
KATHMANDU:
The country will not suffer from a food deficit due to the devastating earthquake of April 25, as there is sufficient food in stock for this fiscal year. Nepal has 565,000 metric tonnes of food in stock which is sufficient to feed the 26.4 million people of the country for the remaining period of this fiscal, said the Ministry of Agricultural Development (MoAD).
Nepal needs 5.3 million metric tonnes of food to feed the country’s population per annum, but the food production was recorded at six million tonnes this fiscal. “We lost about 135,000 tonnes of food in the quake when we take into account the cereals that were stored and got buried in the houses that collapsed in the quake,” Shankar Sapkota, joint spokesman of MoAD told The Himalayan Times.
The stock of 565,000 tonnes that the country currently has excludes the food that was lost in the quake. MoAD has said that the country does not have to import food at least for this fiscal. Besides, the food materials received as donation from various foreign countries will also contribute in the food balance, according to MoAD officials.
However, ministry officials believe that there will be an impact on nutrition security because the hill area has massive contribution in the production of vegetables and livestock.
“There will not be much impact on production of rice next year because the affected districts have dismal contribution (less than two per cent in total production) in the production of rice,” Sapkota said.
MoAD has started making an effort to engage farmers of the 14 most-affected districts in their regular works, but it is a daunting task to bring back the disturbed families in agriculture work. “Our district network — District Agriculture Development Offices — have already been mobilised to bring farmers back to their regular work,” Sapkota said.
El Niño could hit rice plantation
KATHMANDU:
The Department of Hydrology and Meteorology has projected that rainfall in this monsoon will be below normal in the hilly areas except the hills of the Far Western Development Region. The department’s Director General Rishi Ram Sharma has informed that the El Niño phenomenon in the rainy season that is predicted this year may cause below-average rainfall. It is said that the El Niño may affect rice plantation in various parts of the country that are deprived of irrigation facilities.
Source: THT
