Socio-economic and spatial assessment of smallholder peri-urban farming in the middle mountains of Nepal

Most of the peri-urban farmers in the Middle Mountains of Nepal are smallholders and their farm size is declining due to rapid population growth, unsustainable land management practices and pro-production government policies. Imprudent use of agro-chemicals in farming is pervasive among the farmers in the peri-urban areas of the Kathmandu Valley. Rural-urban interface of the valley possesses diverse farming practices, which are basically due to the farmers’ experiences on resource degradation owing to indiscriminate use of agro-chemicals, diversified need of the urbanites, resources availability and market accessibility among others. This book presents the socio-economic and spatial aspects of the different farming systems in and around the peri-urban areas of the valley. It gives a comprehensive and comparative picture of the three farming systems, which are located near to each other but with different mode of operation. Relevance of the prevalent farming practices is dealt with using Analytic Hierarchy Process modeling. As organic farming is a new endeavor in Nepal, this book presents a complete overview of organic farming starting from history to the market response analysis of the organic vegetables. Preferential assessment of the consumers to different attributes of the vegetables is done through conjoint modeling. The book also presents the spatial integration of socio-economic information to find the spatial relevance of the farm-family resources and its effects on farming development. Future developments of the smallholder peri-urban farms are dealt with by critically evaluating several potential strategies at the family level using GAMS and at regional level with spatial explicit modeling.