By Laxman Kafle
Kathmandu, Feb.1: As per the government plan of listing the farmers and classifying them, the Ministry for Agriculture and Livestock Development has pushed forward the listing process.
An information management system has already been developed for this purpose.
The work is being led by the ADS branch of the Agriculture Development Strategy of the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development. In the first phase, the staff members of the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development and the department level have been given practical information about the use of the system and they have also been provided training.
Currently, the Ministry has been conducting training programmes in all seven provinces to train the employees to use the system.
The local government officials will be trained on how to enter names and details of the farmers in the information management system, the Ministry said. The same staff will list the farmers locally.
Secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development Dr. Yogendra Kumar Karki said the listing of the farmers would move ahead rapidly across the country from March this year.
The farmers living across the country can be included in the system and the concerned local governments, and any agencies of Federal, Province and local government will be responsible for listing the farmers.
The government would identify the farmers and manage necessary agricultural inputs and fertilisers on the basis of the categories of the farmers, Karki said.
"We will complete the work of classification of the farmers and distribution of identity cards in the first phase. We will carry out the agricultural programme in a systematic manner on the basis of the same classification,” he said.
A personal account would be created after updating the basic information of the farmers and the farmers can get identification number. Agricultural groups, cooperatives, private firms and companies which are engaged in agricultural activities can be listed in the system.
The classification of the farmers would be a milestone for making agricultural programmes and subsidy effective as the needy farmers would benefit from the government support and subsidy, Karki told The Rising Nepal.
“The actual information of farmers is a basis for agricultural development. We can bring specific programmes based on farmers’ status in terms of finance, land, income and other,” he said.
The listing will mainly include details relating to farmer registration, family, farming, land and agriculture and animal husbandry structure, said Dr. Shree Ram Ghimire, spokesperson of the Ministry.
Stating that it will take a few weeks to collect farmers’ census with their status from the field level, local government should deploy at least two employees in every ward of local level to collect details of farmers.
He, however, said it would take a few months to run the programmes in all local bodies as the present budget allocated by the government would not be sufficient to run the programmes in all local levels.
He said that the Ministry had asked the Provinces and local governments to arrange budget to deploy employees and classify the farmers at the earliest.
The Ministry is confident that after the listing of the farmers, the morale of the farmers will be raised and the national statistics system will be strengthened.