By Smita Adhikari
Pokhara, Feb. 22: These days, a tendency to form 'Farmers’ Group' has grown in rural municipalities. Farmers are being united to demand financial grants for their agricultural necessities.
In each rural municipality, almost 100 Farmer Groups are registered. They are seen communicating frequently to the ward and municipality officials about the procedure to take the grant from the municipality. Annually, almost a dozen notices for a variety of agricultural production, equipment and material are published by municipality offices.
"Our duty is to follow on whether the notice for grant has been published or not," Nawaraj Poudel, a local resident of Rupa Rural Municipality-6, Vangere, said. He was found in municipality office assisting a colleague to manage documents of an application for the 'Plastic Tunnel' grant.
According to rural municipality officials, they find numbers of farmers coming to the municipality office for the registration of their group. Chief of Agriculture Department of Rupa Rural Municipality, Manoj Poudel said, "This year the number of groups is more than the previous year." He added that, Rupa Rural Municipality registered almost 50 more groups than the previous year. The ratio of registering group is almost equal to the agriculture farm. "At the beginning of the local government set up, there were only agriculture farms which were registered as private organizations and were active, but now group as social organization has been active," Chief Poudel added.
Since the beginning of the local governance, rural municipalities of Kaski had run the campaign to motivate local people to carry out agricultural work. Accordingly, they are distributing various grants targeting massive agricultural productions from the locals themselves.
"We want our village to rely on ourselves at least on agricultural goods," Annapurna Rural Municipality Chair Yuva Raj Kunwar said. He informed that the municipality motivates locals mainly on two options of agricultural actions: one is to set up agricultural farm for the business purpose or to form group to secure grants. "But farmers themselves seem to prefer collective work now a days and come for group registration," Agriculture Chief of Madi Rural Municipality Kiran Sapkota said.