October 30: ccording to government data, about 4 million metric tons of vegetables are produced in Nepal annually. As per the data provided by National Center for Potato, Vegetable and Spice Crops Development, all the districts of the seven provinces produced the given amount of vegetables in 284,000 hectares of land in the fiscal year 2020/21.

The total production of 56 types of vegetable crops including cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, tomato, radish, bitter gourd, okra, and green vegetables are included in the data of the center. Looking at the data of the last 10 years, the lowest quantity of vegetables (3,298,000 metric tons) was produced in the FY 2011/12 and the highest (4,271,000 metric tons) in the FY 2018/19.

Although vegetable production increased somewhat in recent years, it seems that it has not fully met the demand of the domestic market. Due to this, vegetables are imported from India, China, Bhutan, Japan and other countries in large quantities each year.

According to Uddhav Adhikari, agricultural engineer and coordinator of the Agricultural Campaign for Food, the best way to become self-reliant in vegetables by increasing production is to develop the local agricultural market. According to him, the farmers have stopped producing because the produced vegetables do not have a market; so they have to import vegetables from abroad.

“The production will increase only if the farmers' products find a market,” he said.

In the fiscal year 2020/21 alone, 231,000 metric tons of vegetables were imported from abroad. In the same year, Nepal exported 6000 metric tons of vegetables. A per the information provided by the centre, most vegetables were produced in Madhesh Province that year. In Madhesh Province, 1,245,000 tons of vegetables were produced on 53,300 hectares of land. The least amount of vegetables was produced in Karnali Province. In Karnali, 149,500 tons of vegetables were produced in 13,200 hectares of land. Similarly, 798,300 tons of vegetables were grown on 50,300 hectares in Province 1 and 727,000 tons of vegetables were grown on 50,400 hectares of land in Bagmati Province.

Similarly, 282,000 tons of vegetables were produced on 22,700 hectares in Gandaki Province, 544,600 tons on 41,900 hectares in Lumbini Province, and 285,000 tons of vegetables were produced on 22,000 hectares in Sudurpaschim Province.

According to Sandeep Subedi, horticultural development officer of the National Center for Potato, Vegetable and Spice Crop Development, due to the lack of quality seeds and fertilizers, farmers are not able to grow vegetables despite their best efforts, and the quality of the soil is not good enough to improve productivity. He added that the data also confirmed that there has been no significant improvement in our productivity in the last 10 years.