After I received the pea cultivation training last year, I was very excited. So I planted about 24 kilograms of seeds. That gave me more than 300 kilograms of peas. I earned 32,000 rupees when I sold the peas. I didn’t know this was so profitable! Now I will produce 600 kilograms next year.
– Ngima Sherpa
Chairperson of Milijuli Farmer’s Group, Beuma, Sotang
Over the past year, we have worked with 2,500 farmers like Ngima to help them raise their family income through vegetable and spice crop production.
Ngima is not the only one to fall in love with the profitable, nutritious, and easy-to-grow peas.
Debkumari Khatri from Rakha invited us to her kitchen garden to show her peas that “are touching the sky and grown so much taller than her.” She sold peas worth 9000 NRs (~USD90) and hot akbare pepper worth around NRs 17000 (~USD170) last year. Inspired by this, she recently expanded her plot of peas, tomatoes, and pepper.
Over the past 3 years, we have helped farmers like Ngima and Debkumari improve their family nutrition while finding an avenue of income generation through cash crops like peas, turmeric, onions, peppers.
Since early 2017, we have also piloted the post-processing of turmeric for the first time. The Creative Herbs Cooperative in Rakha, which initially formed to help our chiraito farmers create better market linkages, led this new venture. Turmeric grown organically by farmers from Rakhabangdel, Sungdel and Dipsung was collected, dried, processed and packaged in Rakha. Some of this powder has been sold to markets in Kathmandu, while most of it was consumed within the local community and the adjacent Aiselukharka market.
Turmeric processing has been just one of the many components of our program that aims to improve the nutrition and income of our partner communities.
In the upcoming year, 721 new farmers will join our agriculture program. Keep up with our journey through our Facebook and Instagram updates.
