Living in fear

Ms. Hira Chaudhary, like so many other women in the small village of Phulbari, Nepal, would wake up every morning and walk about 20 minutes to cross the border into India to work as a day laborer.

She’d earn just 25–30 Indian Rupees (INR) a day, less than one U.S. dollar, planting rice or harvesting sugar cane. The work was labor intensive and the women often feared for their wellbeing as they travelled back and forth each day. They were afraid of thugs, wild animals, and flooding during the monsoon season.

Ms. Hira Chaudhary sits with other Phulbari community members to introduce themselves and discuss the Anukulan / BRACED
project

“We were always fearful, of kidnapping, rape and many things. Sometimes we could not even return home because of flooding,” added Ms. Chaudhary.
The risk was part of their lives as day laborers. They had to leave their children with their older siblings or grandparents and put themselves in harm’s way to earn an income barely enough to live on.

The routine continued until 2015 when the Building Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Extremes and Disasters (BRACED) Project Representatives consulted with community leaders in Phulbari. They decided to implement the Anukulan project aimed at building economic opportunities by teaching individuals how to farm and sell their crops.

The project created enough stability so that women like Ms. Chaudhary no longer needed to migrate for work. They can cultivate their own land and earn enough from selling vegetables to support their families.

“I prefer working here,” says Ms. Chaudhary. “In the future we want to be entrepreneurs. We want to scale up the amount of land we own and vegetables we produce, and build up our business and promote it throughout the community,” she continued.

Community farmers from Phulbari, Nepal, stand for a picture in one of their agriculture fields

Economic opportunities closer to home

Since the project implementation, agriculture fields are now cultivated by women who can plant, maintain, harvest and sell their crops. Ms. Chaudhary and other women are creating secure livelihoods for their families while enjoying working closer to home. This work doesn’t add any extra burdens to their lives since it replaces day laboring. They are now economically independent and the extra income generated from farming is used to finance their children’s education, extra household expenses, other goods, and many can even save up to 100 Nepali Rupees per month.

The Anukulan (which means resilience/adaptation in Nepali) project, part of the BRACED program, is supported by UKAid and implemented by International Development Enterprises (iDE) and its consortium partners, to alleviate the poverty in these vulnerable areas and promote climate change adaptation.

The project targeted four districts in the far west and two districts in the Midwest of Nepal due to the areas vulnerabilities to climate change, disaster impacts and low economic status. Despite these hazards, Kailali District’s flat-lying land provided a lot of potential for farming and presented an opportunity that the project utilized.

Phulbari community members demonstrate a cultural dance.

Women were specifically targeted in the implementation sites due to iDE’s knowledge of men seeking higher paid manual labor jobs in India or the Middle East. Traditionally, men were responsible for agriculture activities, but since they began migrating for work, they now only return home a few times throughout the year to deliver their earnings and spend time with their family.

Due to this phenomenon, the project established the Anukulan agriculture group on 14 October 2015, a 25-member group, 18 of which are women, who own their own land measuring between 1700–2000 square meters.

Members of the group received agriculture training for pre- and post-harvesting, producing off-season vegetable varieties, account keeping, nursery raising, and integrated pest management training to protect their crops using bio-pesticide in the form of trychoderma- a natural soil fungus. This training helped them grow, protect and sell crops such as cauliflower, tomatoes, cucumbers, coriander, radish and gourds. They were also introduced to more diversified crops such as broccoli.

Farmers pause for a brief moment as they tend their agriculture field.

“In the past we didn’t know how to produce some of these vegetables, or which vegetables were a priority to grow in this area, but the training increased our awareness and taught us how to grow and sell vegetables,” said Ms. Shuk Maya Chaudhary, Phulbari agriculture group member.

The project also featured women specific consultation groups including nutrition classes where participants discussed health, childcare practices, and nutrition for both themselves and their children. Some of the groups were named “Mother's Group” and discussed social welfare issues, community development and women’s rights.

Collection centers boosting income and lowering stress

The project also established locally run Collection Centers, where men and women farmers can deliver their crops in bulk and receive payment at a later time. The center makes the once rigorous task of spending almost an entire day selling vegetables into only a one-hour process.

Now farmers from Phulbari can bring their crops to the collection center three times a week from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. to weigh and record what they brought with the collection center’s manager. Women farmers usually leave their children with elder persons of the household while using the collection center.

Dr. Madan Pariyar, Deputy Team Leader, Anukulan/BRACED project, shows the log book that local farmers use to record the
amount of crops they left with the collection center manager.


The vegetables from all the farmers are then pooled together and sold in bulk to traders that can sell it in larger markets in nearby cities. This ensures a market and good prices for the farmers’ crops, who are then paid two or three days later with a small fraction of the profits going towards maintaining the collection center.

Dr. Madan Pariyar describes the impact of the Anukulan/BRACED project.

“Out of every kilogram of vegetables sold, the collection center gets half a Nepalese Rupee as a surcharge to help maintain the center,” said Dr. Madan Pariyar, Deputy Team Leader, Anukulan/BRACED project.

Research shows that farmers using the collection center will get 20 percent more earnings compared to a farmer who sells independently. This is because the bulk vegetables are almost always guaranteed to be bought for sale at larger markets. In this way, the collection center helps the farmers earn more while also decreasing their stress levels since they are confident their crops will sell.

“We always felt pressure concerning whether or not we will be able to sell our vegetables, but after the collection center was constructed we don’t have this tension anymore and our lives have become easier,” said Ms. Shuk Maya Chaudhary.

Ms. Shuk Maya Chaudhary, a community farmer in Phulbari, Nepal, who said the collection center saves her a lot of time and
made her life much less stressful.


The additional income is important because farmers in flood prone areas, such as Phulbari, heavily rely on money earned during the dry season. This is because heavy rains during the monsoon season can cause flooding affecting the farmer’s crop yield and income.

This is one of the reasons why the BRACED program has introduced diversified crops as part of the project. In the future, they plan to introduce flood resistant rice to prevent crop loss during the monsoon season, and have already introduced three types of drought-tolerant rice varieties to build crop resilience during the dry season.

Resilient farming supported by trust, sharing and new found confidence

One of the members from the Anukulan agriculture group said men and women farmers used the collection center from the beginning. This is because the farmers rely on each other, trust each other and are willing to work together. Part of this teamwork is sharing the difficulties they face.

“Many farmers collect here, and when they do, they bring their challenges with them,” said Dr. Pariyar. “Insect or pest infestations, drought conditions, all these hardships are dealt with at the center and from here the problems are taken to experts for solutions,” he continued.

Traditionally, women from these communities felt ashamed to speak out in public, but the project gave them an opportunity to share their thoughts during collection center meetings. Now they feel more confident and reported actively contributing to discussions and feel that their opinions are listened to.
Farmers sharing their experience with one another is crucial for adapting to the effects of climate change and other challenges. Weather patterns in Nepal are already changing, dry and monsoon season times are fluctuating, and it’s important for farmers to have the capacity to adapt.

In addition to the help provided at the collection center, the Anukulan Agriculture Group conducts meetings once a month to discuss specific farming challenges, such as drought or flood conditions, crop issues and pests.

Members of the Anukulan Agriculture Group share the positive impacts of the collection center.


The agriculture training, establishment of the collection center, consultation groups and other project implementations have already led to clear impacts despite the project being just over a year old. Women no longer have to put themselves in danger by traveling for work, and can earn better income closer to their family by utilizing their new farming skills. Not only has this improved their livelihood, but also gave them the confidence to voice their opinion and work together to support each other and become better farmers.

In the future, members of the agriculture group want to register with the District Agriculture Development Office, to continue working with outside organizations to build their capacity, upscale their agriculture activities and continue to focus on Integrated Pest Management.

Asian Disaster Preparedness Center acts as the BRACED program’s engagement lead for Asia and attended a field visit with representatives from the International Development Enterprises (iDE), the Thomson Reuters Foundation and other agencies to observe the impacts of the Anukulan project.

The Anukulan project is a multi-faceted initiative that includes many components, such as the Sunflower pump, not mentioned in this article. To find out more about the project and how it has benefitted over half a million poor and vulnerable people in Nepal please visit the Anukulan project website.