Socio-economic analysis of coffee growers in Gulmi district of Nepal

Coffee is a major plantation cash crop of hills of Nepal. Gulmi is one of the popular districts for coffee production and export in Nepal. This research is an attempt to assess the production potentiality and profitability of coffee in Gulmi district. This study was carried out in four rural municipalities of Gulmi district namely Ruru rural municipality, Dhurkot rural municipality, Satyawoti rural municipality and Musikot municipality. A total of 100 samples (25 from each rural municipality) were selected using simple random sampling technique. Face to face (FtF) interview method was used to collect primary data using pretested semi-structured questionnaire. The economic indicators of coffee production like gross revenue, gross margin, benefit-cost ratio (BCR) and profitability index (PI) were calculated. BCR and PI were found to be 2.84± 0.59 and 2.50± 1.25, respectively. Gross margin per ropani was calculated to be NRs. 15675.29 ± 7189.72. The contribution of coffee in total household income was 12% in Gulmi showing it to be one of the major influencing commodities. The major production problem was found to be insect attack in the district while the major marketing problem was the low market price. The insights of this research were that coffee has the potentiality to uplift the rural income of Gulmi but at the same time there were poor extension services for coffee growers such that farmers had shown dissatisfaction towards coffee enterprise. Therefore, effective package of production and value chain monitoring should be introduced by the Nepal government in order to address the production and marketing constraints of coffee producers

USER’S PERCEPTION ON SCIENTIFIC FOREST MANAGEMENT PRACTICES IN COMMUNITY FOREST OF NEPAL

The government of Nepal has initiated scientific forest management practices in community forests by integrating the silvicultural system rather than considering users local knowledge and practices on forests management. This integrated forest management enhances the productivity and revenue through management of the productive forest. Managing the forest of Nepal has been a big challenge in the recent year but very less is seen to be done to solve the problem. As a result, forest condition of Nepal has gone worse making the environment vulnerable to a number of problems. In this situation, the present research has been conducted to assess the potentiality and constraints of implementing scientific forest management in the community forest. This study had adopted household survey, key informant interview, focus group discussion and review of Operational Plan for the data collection. The study calculated the benefit-cost ratio of both traditional and scientific forest management project. The analysis of the Benefit cost ratio (BCR) between traditional management and scientific management showed that users are likely to benefit more from scientific forest management. The study showed that the major challenges for the management of forest scientifically were unaware about the implementation procedure and technique, lack of financial resource, lack of coordination between stakeholders, lack of public participation in every step of SFM. Some users are willing to participate in SFM, mainly due to the incentives they got from implementing the scientific plan. There is a need for user's capacity building through training, workshops and awareness program along with financial support from the government for implementing plan effectively