Nepal - High-Value Agriculture Project in Hill and Mountain Areas, IFAD Impact Assessment Surveys 2018

The primary objective of the High-Value Agriculture Project in Hill and Mountain Areas (HVAP) was to reduce rural poverty and improve food security through enhanced value chains for high-value agricultural commodities in the hill and mountainous areas of Nepal. The project employed a unique approach bringing different actors of the value chain together; smallholder producers were linked with input suppliers, traders, technical service providers, and financial institutions. The project also provided business literacy training and helped strengthen production and marketing by forming farmer's cooperatives or groups, collectively called producer organizations (POs), technical support for household dairy production and developing milk-marketing chains.The project covers seven hill and mountainous districts in Karnali province and identifies seven agricultural commodities as high value commodities in this area: apple, ginger, vegetable seeds, off-season vegetables, turmeric, timur (Sichuan pepper), and goat. The project supported smallholder farmers by strengthening their access to input markets, output markets, and service markets as well as their skills and capacity to produce market-oriented high value agricultural commodities.For more information, please click on the following link: https://www.ifad.org/en/web/knowledge/-/publication/impact-assessment-high-value-agriculture-project-in-hill-and-mountain-areas.