November 19: The use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and improved variety of seeds has increased in Nepal of late.

According to the data of the Agricultural Census 2078, the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and advanced and hybrid variety of seeds has increased in the last 10 years.

According to the data, the number of farmer families using hybrid rice seeds has increased from 5.4 percent to about 16.5 percent in the last 10 years. In the meantime, the number of people using pesticides on paddy has increased by 15.6 percentage points to 44.6 percent.

Out of 27,65,500 farming families, 14,700 have been found to have used strong pesticides on paddy. Similarly, about 76 percent of the farming families use chemical fertilizers on paddy.

Families using improved variety of seeds for vegetable farming have increased from 19.9 percent to 22.2 percent, while the proportion of farmers using hybrid vegetable seeds has increased from about 5 percent to 13 percent. In the last 10 years, the proportion of farmers who use pesticides on vegetables has increased from 16 percent to 27 percent.

Similarly, out of 5,28,000 farmers who used pesticides on vegetables, 53.2 percent said they used safe (green) pesticides, 33.2 percent said they used medium (blue) pesticides, 12.2 percent said they used strong (yellow) pesticides and 0.7 percent said they used extreme (red) pesticides. The census states that 24 percent of farmers use chemical fertilizers on vegetables. In the previous census, about 22 percent of the farmer families used chemical fertilizers on vegetables.

Director of the Agriculture and Livestock Counting Branch, Badri Kumar Karki, said that the use of pesticides by farmers has been increasing in a bid to minimize the impacts of various diseases and insects on crops that has been rising in recent years.

According to him, the farmers' attraction towards advanced and hybrid varieties of seeds has increased because they can produce a lot even in a small area of land. He also said that farmers are more attracted to chemical fertilizers than organic fertilizers.

According to Karki, the use of chemical fertilizers has increased because the government is not interested in the production of organic fertilizers.

The number of farmer families using chemical fertilizers on corn has increased from 45 percent to 49 percent. Farmer families using advanced and hybrid seeds have increased from 18 percent to 25 percent.

The number of farmer families using advanced and hybrid seeds for wheat cultivation has increased by 2 percentage points to 33 percent. The number of farmer families using pesticides on wheat has increased from 16 percent to 28 percent. However, the number of farmers using chemical fertilizers for wheat farming has decreased. In the previous count, 64 percent of farmers used chemical fertilizers for wheat cultivation, but now it has dropped to 58 percent.