The agricultural sector remains largely dependent on traditional methods of cultivation - using bullocks and farmhands. Often, plots are left fallow during peak agricultural seasons, due to the shortage of labor.

Mechanization is currently limited mainly to larger farms in the Terai. It is particularly inadequate in the mid-hills of Nepal, due to the unavailability of machinery suitable for use in the narrow and sloped terrain. Only an estimated 15% of productive farmland in the mid-hills is prepared by mechanized means.

Samarth-NMDP is working to catalyze changes in the availability of farm machinery suitable for the hills, especially mini-tillers. This includes working with importers and dealers, to capture the market potential for mini-tillers and other varieties of farm machinery.  The interventions focus on effective marketing and after-sales care; and provision of financial and training packages to enable machinery operators to invest in mini-tillers as well as its attachment, to establish service business.

Current Interventions

1. Improve Access to Marketing, Financial and Technical Services

2. Improve Efficiency of Traditional Cultivation Equipment

3. Increase Capacity of Technicians to Strengthen After-sales Services

Working Districts: 
Tehrathum
Ilam
Palpa
Dang
Dadeldhura
Myagdi
Surkhet
Arghakhanchi
Syangja
Dhading
Sindhuli

Related Resources

INFOGRAPH - Mechanisation - SECTOR UPDATE 2018
March 23, 2018

A brief overview of Samarth's Mechanisation sector as a whole, as at 2018. 

 

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Annual Results Report: Programme Year 5 (April 2016 - March 2017)
November 07, 2017

During Programme Year Five, from April 2016 to end March 2017, Samarth-NMDP has solidified its interventions and has been able to record some impressive results at all levels of the log frame. At the impact level, the programme has made significant progress since year 4, reporting a total of 183,463 beneficiaries to date, nearly doubling the programme results to date. One-fourth of the results reported to date come from the Crop Protection Inputs sector, and Pigs, Vegetables, and Fish sectors have all reached between 20-30,000 beneficiaries each.

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Training on maintenance and repair of agri-machineries to improve after-sales services
June 21, 2016

In order to strengthen the after sales services of agri-machineries, Samarth-NMDP is currently working with Department of Agriculture Engineering (DOAEng) and private sector partners to build the capacity of motorcycle and pump-set mechanics to expand into repair and maintenance of agri-machineries. The first phase of the ten-day training was held from May 10th to 19th where 20 mechanics from 20 different districts from all across the nation were trained on the premises of DoAEng in Kathmandu. 

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Linking agri-machinery suppliers with local cooperatives to provide farmers with better finance opportunities
June 21, 2016

Access to finance has always been a limiting factor in the sales of small agriculture machinery. Farmers don’t have easy access to finance and hence are not able to purchase machines that reduce cost and increase productivity. Providing access to finance at a reasonable interest rate could potentially lead to increase in the use and sales of agriculture machinery. To connect local financial cooperatives with agriculture machinery suppliers, two workshops were held on June 1st and June 2nd in Ilam and Jhapa respectively. Click the button below to read more:

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Annual Results Report: Programme Year 4 (April 2015 - March 2016)
May 03, 2016
Based on the approved interventions across ten sectors, the programme expects to generate additional income among 365,200 beneficiaries with net additional income of £19,799,700 within March 2018. Out of this, 96,500 beneficiaries have already realized net additional income of £4,167,700 by March 2016. In total, nine interventions (refer to annex I) have contributed to achieve this. As per the logframe, the programme expects to increase net additional income of 300,000 beneficiaries by £24,000,000.
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