Every year before the rainy season, millions of farming families in Nepal ask the same worried questions. Will we get fertilizer on time this year? Will we get a fair price for our crops, or will our vegetables rot on the highway because no one is buying them?
Recently, the government announced its huge new budget. But if you look closely at the section for farming, something shocking happened. The government cut the agriculture budget by 10.5 billion rupees. This massive cut has started a huge debate across the country. It makes us ask the tough questions that matter to real people who actually touch the soil.
1. The 20 Million Rupee Wall: Who is the Government Really Helping?
The government is introducing a new plan where they promise to pay for 40% of the cost to start a new farm or agricultural factory.
- The Reality: To get this government help, you must invest a minimum of 20 million rupees of your own money first.
- The Question: In a country where the average family farm is tiny, how many ordinary farmers have 20 million rupees sitting in a bank? By setting the bar this high, isn’t the government giving our tax money straight to rich businessmen and big corporations, while leaving the average family farmer out in the cold?
2. Cutting Help for Small Local Groups
To justify its new focus, the government is stopping small grants that used to go to local farming groups and village cooperatives for buying tools and small tractors. They claim the old system had too much corruption and waste.
- The Reality: Local cooperatives—like ones that help over a hundred small farmers pool and dry their crops together—have suddenly seen their funding snatched away, leaving them stranded mid-way.
- The Question: If a few groups misused the money, shouldn’t the government just monitor them better? Why punish the thousands of honest, hardworking local cooperatives that actually keep our villages alive? Why is it that when a small farmer struggles, the help is canceled, but when big industries step in, the rules are bent to clear their path?
3. The Fertilizer Trap: A Yearly Band-Aid?
Because running out of fertilizer always makes farmers angry and causes big political protests, the government put a record 32.46 billion rupees just into buying chemical fertilizer this year.
- The Reality: This single item is now swallowing up more than half of the entire agriculture budget.
- The Question: While we definitely need fertilizer right now, what happens to everything else? When more than half of the budget goes into an imported chemical, how will we fund local irrigation, build better local markets, or give low-interest loans to young people who want to start small farming businesses? Are we actually fixing agriculture for the long term, or just buying a temporary band-aid every year?
4. Giving Up Land to Big Companies
It is hard to use big modern tractors on Nepal’s tiny, split-up fields. To fix this, the government is pushing for “land pooling.” This means neighbors combine their small fields into one massive farm, hand it over to a big company, and become “shareholders” instead of landowners. To encourage this, the government is giving these new big companies a 10-year break from paying income tax.
- The Reality: For a rich investor, this is a goldmine.
- The Question: For an ordinary family, land is their only safety net. If a farmer hands their ancestral land over to a big corporate company, do they really have a say in how things are run? Or do they risk losing their independence and becoming just day-laborers on their own soil?
The Bottom Line
This year’s budget makes one thing crystal clear: the government believes the future of farming belongs to big businesses and rich investors, not traditional family farmers.
Modernizing our fields is important, but true progress should be measured by how well our everyday farmers are doing, not just by how much profit a big company makes. If the state stops supporting the small farmer in a rush to help big business, we are putting our food security and our rural communities at huge risk.
What do you think? Does this budget genuinely help modernize our fields, or does it leave our everyday farmers stranded in the dust? Let’s talk about it in the comments below!
