Impact of social, institutional and ecological factors on land management practices in mountain watersheds of Nepal

Abstract

This paper analyses factors influencing the adoption of land management practices in two mountain watersheds of Nepal based on information collected through a questionnaire survey of 300 households. Farmers in both watersheds have adopted several types of structural and biological land management practices to control land degradation. The stepwise multiple linear regression model ran using SPSS revealed 10 variables significantly influencing the adoption of land management technologies. The variables found significant are: extension service, caste affiliation of farmers, household agricultural labor force, landholdings with fluvents, dystrochrepts, and rhodustalfs soils, training on land management, schooling period of the household head, participation in joint land management activities, and landslide density in farmlands. The predicted R value of 0.62, R square of 0.37, and adjusted R square of 0.35 indicate moderate explanatory power of the model as a whole. However, the acceptance of the variables included in the model helps us to draw very useful policy conclusions for sustainable land management. All above mentioned variables have positive influence on the adoption of land management technologies, but remarkably, extension services were revealed as the strongest factor influencing the adoption of technologies. This indicates the positive influence of the extension service provided by the Phewatal Management Project and the need for provision of similar type extension service for farmers elsewhere in the hills of Nepal.

Introduction

There is very high population pressure on land resources in developing countries due to small landholdings and dwindling quality of agricultural lands (Lefroy, Bechstedt, & Rais, 2000). The mountains of Nepal are not an exception where the degradation of land resource base and declining crop yields has been a major challenge to attain food security for farming communities (Keatinge, Wheeler, Subedi, Shah, Ellis and Summerfield, 1999, Paudel, 2001). Particularly in the middle mountains, hereafter referred to as the hills, a typical farm household possesses an average landholding size of about 0.75 ha and yields of rice, wheat, maize and millet range from 1 to 2.3 ton/ha (DA, 1999). Such very low crop yield is attributed primarily to dwindling soil fertility (Tuladhar, 1994). Being aware of the possible threat of food shortage arising from diminishing landholdings, hill farmers have adopted several strategies for securing their livelihood (Blaikie, 1985). Traditionally, expansion of agricultural land into forests and rangelands has been the most popular strategy. Nowadays there is very limited scope for this, owing to the location of most existing forests and rangelands in steep slopes and increasing government and local community restriction on encroachment of these resources. The overwhelming majority of Nepalese hill farmers have, therefore, resorted to land use intensification as an alternative strategy for sustaining their livelihoods. Being concerned about possible adverse effects of land use intensification on crop yield, hill farmers have adopted several biological and structural measures of land management ranging from terrace construction to agroforestry, though the degree of adoption of such measures varies from one farm household to another (Thapa & Weber, 1990). Despite this, farmlands in the hills of Nepal are undergoing degradation, as for some reasons farmers have not been able to manage them effectively (Fleming, 1983, Thapa, 1996, Thapa and Paudel, 2002).

Agriculture is the economic mainstay of the overwhelming majority of hill people in Nepal and will continue to remain so in the near future in view of very slow pace of economic development. However, the on-going land degradation has threatened undermining the sustenance of their livelihood. To prevent such possible situation, it is essential to enable hill farmers to expand and adopt more effective conservation measures by implementing appropriate land conservation programs. Any effort towards this direction should begin from a research that aims at exploring location specific factors influencing the adoption of land management practices. Findings of such research will be helpful for devising appropriate policies and programs conducive to promotion of land management. Realizing such need, this research was carried out in two small watersheds located in the Western Development Region of Nepal (Fig. 1). For two and half decades, farmers in Phewatal watershed were provided with external support such as extension services and subsidy for terrace improvement, so as enabling them to manage land resources effectively. While farmers in the Yamdi-Mardi watershed could not get such external support for land management. Selection of these two watersheds with distinct variation in terms of access to external support was inspired by our interest in, besides others, knowing about the impact of such support on adoption of land management practices, which bears very important policy relevance for sustainable land conservation. As elsewhere (Ervin & Ervin, 1982), we expected adoption of more measures of land management in Phewatal watershed, because of farmers’ access to information and necessary support.