Study on Distillation Units in Nepal completed: some preliminary findings

In May 2013, Chelsea Johnson conducted interviews in three different districts of Nepal: Banke and Bardiya in the terai and Lalitpur in the hills. 

The social changes seen since the installation of the distillation units (DUs) has been obvious.  All people who contributed plants for essential oil distillation have said that the extra income has been used for their children’s school fees and food for the household.  Even non-users have noticed change in the community: children are receiving better education and fewer men need to go abroad for work because of the increased incomes from essential oil production.  The money from cultivating and gathering plants contributes to 20-80% of household income, with an average of 45%. One farmer was able to make enough money from distilling essential oil in the community DU that he invested 100,000 rupees from his savings to buy his own DU.  He now charges others farmers to use it.

In the buffer zone around Bardiya National Park, essential oil crops keep wildlife from encroaching onto farms.  Because this has worked so well in Bardiya, essential oil crops are spreading to the area around the city of Pokhara in the hills, where monkeys are a serious problem in the community.

Even though the DUs have had success, there are opportunities for improvement.  With training for farmers in market dynamics, they could better understand price changes and grow crops accordingly.  An opportunity for additional income would be to sell the hydrosol, a by-product of processing which is currently being discarded but could sell for 720 rupees per liter of mentha hydrosol.  The DU’s strengths are being a simple technology which uses renewable energy; however, if a biomass gasifier was installed fuel usage could decrease, as well as greatly reduce emissions.

The distillation unit has many benefits for society, economy and environment.  The DUs visited in the study have provided significant additional income for smallholder farmers. This is especially true for women who make up more than half of the users and most of whom reported having opportunities equal to men.  Gathering, cultivation, and firewood collection are managed by a forest committee, so environmental resources are protected.  These assets are part of the reason that DUs continue to be installed across Nepal and become more successful each year.

Where rivers run dry, landless farmers benefit: vegetables from riverbeds

Ms. Katharina Schiller, a master student from Hohenheim University, is investigating the sustainability of riverbed farming in the Indo-Gangetic plains (the Terai) of southern Nepal, in collaboration with Helvetas Nepal. 

After the monsoon season, rivers run dry again, giving landless and land-poor farmers, as well as those whose arable lands have been lost to siltation from floods, an opportunity to use the dry riverbeds for vegetable farming. 

Ms. Schiller has been in Nepal since late March. After spending a week meeting stakeholders from the Riverbed Farming Alliance in Kathmandu, she went to Dhangadhi, in the southwest corner of Nepal, to do the bulk of her field work. There, she met stakeholders at the local government level before beginning regular trips to meet with riverbed farming groups in the two westernmost districts of the Terai, Kailali and Kanchanpur. Most groups she has met have been composed of Tharu (indigenous) people, and a large percentage have been female farmers. These represent two of the most disadvantaged groups in the Terai. 

In the riverbed farming program, riverbed land is leased to groups of farmers. The groups receive lessening amounts of inputs for 3 years. Technological training through Local Resource Persons continues after the project phases out. The groups Ms. Schiller has met have been farming in the riverbeds for several years now and report very positive results. The income from the sales of vegetables have allowed them to increase their household's year-round access to food, purchase arable land, open new businesses, and invest in their children's education. Eating patterns have changed, with all farmers interviewed thus far reporting that they eat much more vegetables now than in the past. Most groups also mentioned a reduction in male out-migration to seek employment in urban centers of Nepal or India. 

The success of riverbed farming is evident from the high level of replication of the technology by other villagers (spill over effect), clearly visible in adjacent fields. 

Ms. Schiller is looking forward to continuing to meet riverbed farming groups in the next weeks. 

Photos: Katharina Schiller