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Showing posts from December, 2013

River bed Farming (RbF) in Nepal

Riverbed farming ( baluwa/bagarkheti i.e. cultivation in the sand) is the general practice of cultivating crops on the bed or in some cases banks of the river during the low water/dry seasons. This practice dates back to thirty years when mostly Indian nomadic farmers living near the border areas used to come to cultivate the riverbeds which were arable for certain types of crops. Watermelon was the only crops cultivated in the beginning. Although it started under the circumstances where there were no alternative lands for cultivation of crop such as watermelon, the scope has certainly widened greatly. And its utilization in wider scale is a relatively recent phenomenon. The practice has evolved from being a subsistence livelihood approach to a commercial enterprise among the marginalized, landless and land-poor communities of terai . The key reasons for the expansion of this practice are mainly due to the availability of fertilizers and nutrients and improved agriculture technol...