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Trade Liberalization in Agriculture, Food Security and Impact on Peasant Women in Nepal
By Sita Paudel General Secretary All Nepal Women Association (ANWA) 
Central Office, Kathmandu Nepal Po Box: 620 Kathmandu Tel/Fax: 0977-1-258234

* A Country Paper to be presented at the Asian Workshop on Women and Globalization
   held in November 22-23, 2001 Manila, Philippines.


Country Background 

Physio-graphically, Nepal can be divided into three distinct ecological categories: (i) high mountains comprising about 35 percent of the area, (ii) hills comprising about 42 percent of the areas and (iii) tarai plain in the south comprising 23 percent of land the areas.

Nepal possesses remarkable latitudinal variation ranging from 100 meters from sealevel in the southern foothill to over 8000 meters in the northern crest line. Even more remarkable area the diverse but fragile biophysical environments embedded in the physical configuration. Centuries of human interaction with these diverse environments have resulted human communities with a myriad of cultural diverse along situational gradation. The social and economic systems contained in culturally diverse communities are linked with the natural diversities of the landscape.

Altogether more than 60 different ethnic and caste groups live in Nepal.Brahman, chetri, Newari are politically and xocially the dominant group comprasing about 35% of the total population (Brahmans 14% chhetris 16% and Newar about 5%). The other major ethnic groups include Tamang, Mager, Gurung, Tharu, Kami, Yadav, Rai, and Limbu, Dhimal and Muslim. Though all ethnic groups have their own languages and dialects, Nepal, the official language, function as a link language spoken by more than 95% of the population, Hinduism is the predominant religion followed by Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity. Nepali society is characterized by a myriad culture andethnic mosaics with a high degree of tolerance, harmony and coexistence for centuries in the region of South Asia.

Resource Base

 Nepal has been marked as one of the poverty stricken countries in the world. The national economy is still deriving around 45% of the GDP {from agricultural sector and employing more than 80% of the population.

The land distribution pattern in Nepal is skewed as a result of which large masses of the people do not have access to productive land resources. Fifty percent of households own only 6.6% of the cultivated land, each household owing less than .5 ha. It is interesting to note that more than two third household's posses less than one-hectare land and account for only 17.4% of the cultivated land. It clearly shows that small segments of the population controls most of the land resource and opportunities. This has serious repercussion in the rural poverty particularly on wage rates, employment, and their participation in the development process and is the major cause of poverty, food insecurity and rural unemployment.

The hill communities are involved in rain fed subsistence agriculture ion low quality soils. It has become increasingly difficult of r them even to maintain the subsistence income from traditional activities. Limitation and pressure in availability of arable land has pushed many families further and further into marginal areas or hire out their labor to local larger farmers in the Terai. Increasingly large number of hill poors are seeking to compensate by turning to low productivity animal husbandry on increasingly degraded public land. The ecological crisis of the hills in Nepal is the reflection of a crisis in the economy of the poor.

Agriculture again is the main activity of the Terai. Though the agricultural potential of the Terai is high, rapid growth of population with restricted resources has generated increasing marginality and poverty with continued seasonal and permanent migration from the hills and the neighboring states from India, population increase in Terai is at least 3 times greater than in the mountain and the hills. This has in turn seriously exacerbated the land distribution which is the single most crucial determinate of Nepal's overall poverty.

Land guarantees social status since all opportunity are linked with access to land owing elates have always dominated such relationship thorough their social relation and power, and have harvest the benefits of decades of planned development. The rural mass of Nepal, incapable of supporting themselves on the tiny cultivable land as a result of sheer smallness of holding and relatively low quality, is gradually dissolving into a mass of workers only tenuously connected with the land and largely depending upon the off-farm sale of their labor to exist. Indeed, a rapid process of privatization engulfs rural Nepal.


Poverty and Socio-economic Structures

 Food insecurity can not be isolated from poverty. In most cases, It is the poverty that causes food insecurity for households and communities. Therefore, poverty must enter into the analysis of food insecurity; Poverty is created and perpetuated under certain politico-economic structures. Because of the interplay of powerful national and international forces, the genuine poverty alleviation programs have remained ineffective. The principle cause of poverty and its perpetuation in Nepal have been recognized as follows:

(a) Feudal economic social structure
(b) Fetalism and religious orthodoxim 
(c) Ignorance and lack of proper education 
(d) Lack of political commitment on the part of government 
(e) Lack of appropriate policies and institutional mechanism to address poverty 
(f) Lack of employment opportunity in rural urban areas 
(g) Lack of rural women farmers'employment program

Objectively poverty can be considered as the consequence of the following factors

(a) Inequitable distribution and access to the productive resources 
(b) Unequal labor/ capital exchange 
(c) Rapid population growth and poor resource base

The structure of the land holding makes it clear that much rural labor power remain inactive and unexpended. The regime of unequal exchange between production and the means of capital formation are two types of tradition than create and perpetuate poverty. The first one is the transaction of labor and produce and the other one is the transaction of two different products. The decline in the real wage of agricultural labors even under the condition of full employment exhibits first type of unequal transaction and the higher relative price of non agricultural commodities relative of agricultural commodities exhibits the degree of unequal exchange rates in the second type of transaction. Because of this Terai either go to neibouring Indian states where they find relatively higher wage rates or migrate to urban areas in search of better jobs which has contributed negatively to total food production.

The distribution of state and private investment, taxes and subsidies has been heavily biased against the poor. Urban areas and the larger farmers have been the actual receipt and benificiariesof the bulk of state subsidies. The indirect taxes on essential commodies also hit the poor, though the magnitude of their consumption may be negligible. The governments' overriding emphasis on the imports of the goods rather than manufacturing such goods seriously constraint the generation of new jobs and employment opportunities.

The high population growth rate (2.7% in the past and 2.1 % at present) undoubtedly eroded the limited gains made in GDP and food production, causing substantial reduction in per capita income. For example, if the population growth had been reduced to 1.5 % over the period instead of 2.7 % and 2.1 %, the real per capita GDP would have risen 45% rather than less than 14% so far achieved. How Nepal is going o manage its population of 40 nukkuib on just 25 years from now with resource base inadequate to supper 20 million at present? The major political parties and the government must make population management program vis a via Nepal's open border with India to avoid a crises to survive as an action.


Processes contribution to food insecurity and poverty

 Food insecurity is not and can't be an isolated phenomenon, rather than it is and integral part of rural poverty which is created and perpetuated by many intrerlinked and interrelated socio-economic and physical process. Though most of these processes may be universal in their occurrence in creating poverty in the most of the developing countries, some processes may be uniquely active in certain countries in creating poverty. In the context of Nepal, following processes have been identified with respect to the variation, perpetuation and acceleration of poverty.


Structural processes 

These processes are intrinsic to the existing socio-political structures and effectively prevent the oiirs from having an equitable access to the productive resources. Attempts must be made to dismantle or reform such feudal structure so that the poors can have access to the resources, skills, education, health and other essentials of modern life.


Policy Induced processes

The policies and institutions often have built -in-biases, which exclude the rural poor from the benefits of development, accentuating the impacts of other poverty processes. Such policies and the institutions fail to recognize the productive potential of poor (small holder farmers in most developing countries), the potential that could be unleashed with the right kind of support. Examples: Urban bias in investment, which pre-empts resources from rural areas; bias toward export crops which can undermine resources devoted to local food production; pricing policies favoring imported agriculture produce at the expense of the local crops; subsidies for the adoption of import-intensive technology, heavy taxation on small farmers' export crops and direct and indirect exchange rate overvaluation which renders poor farmers' commodities uncompitative; lack of access to credit, input and technological packages; underdeveloped markets, inequitable share cropping and tendency arrangement; lack of access to irrigation water resources; lack of effective extension; lack of skill development training; and finally lack of grassroots institution to encourage peoples' participation.


Population growth 

Rapid increase in population is perhaps the survival strategy of the poor that generally leads them to strive for relatively large families because the children are valuable assets and provide security to their old age. Once the tendency of the poor to have larger family is reversed through increased expenditure on education, health, and other related costs, the total fertility starts to decline. However, growing population leads to the fragmentation of land holding and degradation of crop, pastures, and forest land. The consequences of this process are: marginalisation and landlessness declining yields etc.


Degradation of Environmental Resource-Base

 Rural poverty is closed linked to degradation of environment as poverty depletes natural resources which in turn accentuates food insecurity and the suffering of the rural poor. The challenge is how to reverse this negative linkage. With people centered and participatory policies and technological support, the rural poor can reverse the vicious cycle of resource depletion and poverty.


Exploitative Intermediators 

Rural poor have been the victims of different kinds of exploitative intermediators, brokers, landlords, moneylenders, commission agents, all exploit poor farmers in different forms and manners. Sometimes, even-the government agencies such as co-operatives, and credit institutions become the instruments of such exploitation. Such exploitation is wide spread and has resulted in acute food insecurity of the rural people in Nepal.


Land - lockedness and Fragile Mountain Ecology

 Nepal is landlocked by India in the East, West and South and by China in the North. Having no access to the sea and being locked behind India's highly protectionist trade barriers, Nepal' capacity to follow independent macroeconomics policies is extremely limited. Nepal had to and may have to face economic strangulation of India. India has not granted Nepal's trade with third countries other than India is negligible.

Nepal, being a mountainous and hilly country, is subjected to fragile geomorphic and ecological conditions. This region contains about 56% (11 million) of human population and over 60%(8million) ruminant animals. Crops, trees, grasses and shrubby vegetation and domesticated animals interact, producing necessary goods and services. This region has 16 persons per hectare with high population growth rate (2.6%), high animal population, and acute shortage of food, fodder, and fuel wood. These Pressures have been observed in the form of accelerated deforestation, overgrazing, and clearing of steep slops for food production. This has accelerated soil erosion that is 300 Million tons/Year (20 tons/ha/year). This has been manifested in the decline of agricultural productivity and serious undermined the people's quality of life and nation's security in food production.


Trade liberalization and its impacts on women. 

It is important to realize that communities or individuals produce food to meet the needs of the communities or the population rather than the demands of global market. Therefore, the community involved in food production must be able to exercise significant control over the food production and distribution. Only such control of the community can guarantee food security.

Global market forces are ineffective in ensuring food security. This will inevitable be manifested in an increased risk of food shortage, reduced food quality and nutrition and increased marginalization of resource poor farmers in global South. The national agricultural policies will be geared to cash-crop export-oriented and comparative advantage production system and will leads to be collapse at the subsistence food production system that exist in many resource poor communities of developing world. The developing countries will have to import food from the developed countries in exchange for cashs-crop and raw materials needed by the developed countries.

WTO and international trade policies of the Northern capitalist countries were formulated to maintain the exclusive economic colonialism and control of the South to perpetuate inequalities through the creation of dependency economic relationship. The inclusion of agriculture in WTO to integrate local and national economies into a single global market system and the Trade Related Intellectual Property System (TRIPS) incorporated in the agreement will eventually place agri-biological diversities of the Southern countries for possible expropriation and ownership of trans-national corporation of the North.

The national government in the South has modified their national agricultural development policies in keeping with GATT formulation towards export orientation. Large tract of productive lands is being allocated for cash-crop production and favorable condition will be created to facilitate the agri-based trans-national corporations take over the production processes. The cropping patterns will be drastically changed, subsistence farming communities will be displaced, the land will be exhausted, food production will be drastically decreased and food market will be completely out of control of the ordinary people. It will increase the debt burden of the poor countries thus further aggravating food insecurity. Food aids and food imports from Global north will perpetuate long-term food insecurity in the Global South. This is a case of, more dangerous economic re- or neo-colonisation of countries of the south through GATT (WTO), international trade policies, IMF, and WB than the past direct colonization. This total control of the economies and to fight against such colonialism is in fact much more complex and difficult especially for the countries of weaker economies.

Women, particularly in the developing countries like Nepal, suffer from the trade liberalization that we are talking in this forum. The impacts of trade liberalization in the context of the developing countries can be summarized as follows: Liberalization will have negative impact on women in the areas of education, health, employment, security and even integrity. It degrades the subsistence economy of the people at large which in turn creates unemployment with eroding their traditional skills and knowledge of the very survival of their own. In this context women suffer more than their counterpart. Women gradually loose their own resources, skill and knowledge because of the patent right practices. Women are responsible for food production cycle, which includes planting, care taking, harvesting, seed keeping etc. But in such situation of liberalization they will not in position to continue such practices. And ultimately most of the women in developing countries will be marginalized and deprived from their basic base of life consequently leading the society into injustice, unequal, pervasive and unstable.

Thank you for your kind attention.