Delay in plantation due to deficient rainfall as well as drought in Tarai districts coupled with shortage of chemical fertilizers are the major reasons behind drop in paddy production, according to officials.
Paddy production plummeted by 10 percent to 4,299,000 tons this year, according to Ministry of Agricultural Development. This is the third straight year that paddy production has fallen. The decline is worth around Rs 10 billion in monetary terms, ministry officials say.
According to officials, only percent of total cultivated land failed to yield crop this year. Similarly, paddy production area fell by 4 percent to 61,000 hectares this year. Likewise, paddy productivity has also declined by 6.11 percent this year. Last year, productivity had declined by one percent only.
Unveiling 'Preliminary Summer Crop Production Report' on Wednesday, Suyog Pokkhrel, joint secretary of Ministry of Agricultural Development said the country needs to import 809,218 tons rice to meet the deficit.
The import projection is calculated based on last year's imports. Last year, the country had imported 550,000 tons of rice worth Rs 14 billion.
Despite drop in paddy production, the country enjoys food surplus of 155,000 tons this year, according to the report.
“Drop in paddy production can be compensated by wheat in terms of volume. But our consumption pattern shows rice cannot be replaced by another food grain,” said Pokhrel.
A Nepali consumes an average of 191 kg of food grains every year based on the 2,100-calorie daily diet. Per capita rice consumption stands at 122 kg.
Similarly, a Nepali consumes 45 kg of maize and 18 kg of wheat as well as other grains like millet and barley annually.
To avert food deficit situation, MoAD has written to the Ministry of Commerce and Supplies to bar famers from their paddy to Indian traders through formal or informal channels. Similarly, it has asked the Nepal Food Corporation (NFC) to purchase 400,000 tons of paddy from farmers.
Meanwhile, maize production increased by four percent to 2.23 million tons this year. Not only the production, maize productivity also increased by 2.9 percent this year. “Surplus maize production along is sufficient to meet cereal requirement of 350,000 people,” Hemaraj Regmi, senior statistician at MoAD, said. “But very few people eat maize. The crop is mainly used to prepare animal feed.”
Similarly, production of buckwheat increased by 7 percent to 11,640 tons this year. But its share in national food crop is very nominal. Production of millet, however, fell by 2 percent to a little over 300,000 tons.
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