Climate Variability and Livelihood of the Rural Farmers

Agriculture is the mainstay of livelihood of the people in rural areas of Nepal. Any perturbations in agriculture stemming from climatic and/or non-climatic factors can affect their livelihood significantly. Farmers keep exploring alternative practices in agriculture to adapt to increasing uncertainties and some of which can be scaled out to enhance resilience of the agricultural system. Rain-fed farming predominates in the area, drought events have negatively affected agriculture and local livelihoods. Cold spells along with increasing foggy days aggravated the occurrence of pest and diseases affecting winter crops far more than what it used to be. Landraces of many crops had disappeared and new invasive species started appearing in the farmlands. It is very important to see what farmers explore under changing circumstances, including climate change and variability and what practices can be promoted to make farming communities resilient. This book is useful for researchers involved in the perception based research on climatic variability and the localized impact of the climate.