Search

Despite of the advancement in technology and excessive use of chemical fertilizers for agricultural production, about 870 million people around the globe are hunger stricken due to various resource scarcities. There is a need to boost the agricultural productivity in order to feed the population which is growing in sky rocketing way. Food insecurity is a burning problem affecting nutrition, health and the betterment of population across the globe. Basically, food security depends on four pillars: availability, access, utilization and stability. Sustainable approaches in agricultural sector are of great importance to improve the food productivity and security along with mitigating nutrition problem around the world. In industrialized countries, less developed and developing countries, gaps in earnings by gender have long been evident. For the equivalent kind of work, women wages are found to be 60-75% of men wages. The agricultural sector of Nepal contributes 28 percent to national GDP and this share tends to rise in the future years. At present the productivity of Nepal is sufficient to feed its population but there are a lot of problems related to gender inequality which eventually affects food and nutritional security. Several such aspects are discussed in this paper.

Dairy sector has been a vector in providing dairy products to the urban population and pull the urban capital into the rural areas. Dairy industries have been successful in creating a strong network between the dairy farmers and the consumers and have been established as a bridge between the urban and rural trade across the country. The entire dairy chain is dependent upon milk production. At present, Nepal contributes approximately 0.247% of the world's total milk production. Nepal's milk output is estimated to be 2.05 million metric tons. The per capita availability of milk in Nepal is around 158.9 grams per day, which is far below than the value recommended by World Health Organization (WHO). The current milk production should be raised by 4 percent so as to meet the WHO recommended minimum value of 250 gm per day per-capita milk consumption by the year2025.The dairy sector in Nepal is the most important sub sector in Nepalese livestock production. Almost 28% of the national GDP comes from the agriculture and livestock sector. However, the share of dairy sector in agricultural GDP of Nepal is 8% of the national GDP. Beside contributing to the GDP, the agriculture sector also provides employment to the two-thirds of the country’s population. The cooperative sector in Nepal has been in the emerging state and is playing an important role in socioeconomic development of millions of rural families.