Galkot, Oct 28

Mixed cropping system is flourishing in the mountainous district Myagdi in recent times. A growing number of farmers in the district are attracted to this type of cropping pattern as they can cultivate more than one crop from the same plot of land and earn more from this.

Durga Bahadur Thapa of Bagarphant, Beni Municipality-2, cultivated banana on a plot of land together with trees supplying fodder for animals and millet after he returned home from Kathmandu in April. He says this has really paid off. Similarly, Chandra Bahadur Karki, a farmer of Khabara, Beni Municipality-2, has been earning hundreds of thousands through mixed cropping of seasonal and off-season vegetables on his 18 ropanis land plot. Karki is also the leading farmer for mixed crop farming in Myagdi district.

He grows potato, cabbage, cauliflower, tomato, leafy vegetables, broccoli, coriander, onion, garlic, chilli together with banana, orange, lemon, guava, among other fruits in the same plot of land throughout the year. Besides, he also has been doing buffalo and goat keeping, beekeeping and fish farming. “I started vegetable cultivation since I was 18 years old. I was offered office jobs and proposal to go abroad for employment.

But I rejected these and adopted farming. Now I feel that I had made the right decision that time,” recalled the 54-year-old Karki. The commercial vegetable cultivation that he started three decades back with an investment of Rs 1,000 has really paid him off now. He bought a land plot and also built a house at Mangalaghat in Beni Bazaar with the income from vegetable farming. Karki said many people took a leaf out of his profession and the number of farmers adopting mixed crop farming in the district has increased. “One can earn three times more from mixed farming than single crop farming,” he said, sharing about the benefits of mixed cropping. According to agriculture technicians, mixed-crop farming has been in practice in Nepal since ancient time. Shovit Sapkota, another farmer from Khabara has also earned much from mixed-crop farming.

He has grown banana, leafy vegetables, sugarcane and chilli on a single plot. He said he has been earning three times more than whet he used to make from single crop farming before this. Agriculture technician at Mangala Rural Municipality, Jagat Baniya said mixed farming is expanding in Myagdi district in recent days and the farmers have also been making a decent earning from this.

More than 200 farmers in all the six local levels including Beni Municipality in the district are into mixed-crop farming.