A primary estimate of the major agricultural products, which was released by the Ministry of Agriculture and Co-operatives (MoAC), says that wheat production -- the third major cereal crop in Nepal-- will decline by 230,000 tons, to 1.34 million tons this year. The main reason we´ll see this shortfall is that the winter that has just ended saw a protracted drought and meager snowfall.
Dr Hari Dahal, spokesperson of the MoAC says that, as a consequence, this year´s wheat production in the mountain and hilly districts will fall by up to 50 percent and 30 percent, respectively. But the Tarai, where wheat is mostly grown on irrigated land, will be spared such drastic drop offs.
Agriculture scientists say that a dry wave that started its journey in February from countries to the west of Nepal laid waste entire wheat fields across the country.When the unfavorable climate took hold here, farmers switched to crops other than wheat. As a result, says the MoAC, wheat production areas shrunk by 1.6 percent, to 694,000 hectares this year, from 706,000 hectares last year.
"The combined impact of the insufficient rain, the meager snowfall, the decline in production areas, and, of course, the drought means that, overall, wheat productivity this year will decrease by 13 percent," says Dahal. Furthermore, the amount of barley readied for consumption-- another major winter crop- will go down by 17 percent since the total production area for barley has declined by 1.3 percent this year.
Now, according to the figures forecast by MoAC, all other products, except for tobacco and sugarcane, should see marginal increases in production. In fact, paddy, maize and millet-- the other major staple crops that people depend on for daily sustenance-- will also see marginal increases in their production volumes. So shouldn´t this surplus offset the problems that will very soon be caused by the reduced wheat production?
The problem with such wishful thinking all stems from not taking into account the period for when this crisis will hit. Yes, paddy constitutes the most used staple by far. But rice was harvested back in December of last year. The people in the remote hilly districts have already used up their rice stocks by now. The same thing goes for maize and millet. Millet was harvested around November, and corn was harvested even further back, around September. So the stocks of all these staple food items have already been consumed.
Wheat and barley, if they´d been produced in the usual volumes, would have staved off the crisis, by filling in as the go-to staples once the rice stocks had run out. But as we have seen, the drought and other factors that occurred this winter have thrown things completely out of gear. Although the MoAC´s figures show that paddy and maize production will soar by 5.2 percent and 2.8 percent this year, those products will only be ready for consumption in December and September. By then, no matter how bountiful the harvests, it might be too late.
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