Problem: The Monsoon rains are sometimes delayed in Nepal. In a normal year, however, Nepal has an extended dry season, which when combined with the remoteness of terrace farms causes out-migration to cities for employment and lack of feed for animals.
Our Solutions
•We are scaling up distribution of low cost drip irrigation kits procured from iDE Canada/Nepal. We are encouraging farmers to build simple rainwater harvesting facilities using local supplies, as a source of water for these drip irrigation systems to support: (1) establishment of small nurseries during the pre-Monsoon period from which to transplant into the field, to extend the growing season and mitigate risks associated with increasingly unpredictable Monsoon rain onset; and (2) to support small vegetable gardens during the early or late part of the dry season.
•We are working with farmers to test an innovative idea: train farmers to select among dry season weeds which are palatable by livestock and to encourage deliberate saving and propagation of seeds of these weeds.
•We are promoting the use of shorter-duration, drought tolerant legume cover crops, and livestock forage cover crops for the dry season and pre-Monsoon season.
•We are using the SAK picture book of best practices to scale up these concepts which are easily translated to hillside farmers in Africa and Haiti.