Agriculture In The Valley
Agriculture employs two out of three residents of the Kathmandu Valley, the farmers a mixture of Newars, Baahuns, Chhetris and Tamangs. Newar farmers, called Jyapus, dig their fields with two-handed spades called kodaalo ( ku in Newari) - it's back-breaking work - and live in close, brick settlements on the valley floor, while the other groups tend to use bullock ploughs and build detached, mud-walled houses around the fringes. Many are tenant farmers and are expected to pay half their harvest as rent. Low enough in elevation to support two or even three main crops a year, and endowed with a fertile, black clay - kalimati, a by-product of sediment from the prehistoric lake - the valley floor has been intensely cultivated and irrigated for centuries. Rice is seeded in special beds shortly before the first monsoon rains in June, and seedlings are transplanted into flooded terraces no later than the end of July. Normally women do this job, using their toes to bed each shoot in the mud. The stalks grow green and bushy during the summer, turning a golden brown and producing mature grain by October. Harvest time is lazily anarchic: sheaves are spread out on paved roads for cars to loosen the kernels, and then run through portable hand-cranked threshers or bashed against rocks. The grain is gathered in bamboo trays ( nanglo) and tossed in the wind to winnow away the chaff, or, if there's no wind, nanglo can be used to fan away the chaff. Some sheaves are left in stacks to ferment for up to two weeks, producing a sort of baby food called hakuja, or "black" rice. The rice dealt with, terraces are then planted with winter wheat , which is harvested in a similar fashion in April or May. A third crop of pulses or maize can often be squeezed in after the wheat harvest, and vegetables are raised year-round at the edges of plots. The lot of valley farmers has improved in the past generation. Land reform in the 1950s and 1960s, which didn't work too well in most parts of the country, was more diligently implemented near the capital, helping to get landlords and moneylenders off the backs of small farmers. However, the traditional Newar system of inheritance , in which family property is divided up among the sons, means that landholdings get smaller with each generation. That presents a contrasting problem: farms that are too small to make mechanical equipment worthwhile, necessitating labour-intensive methods and keeping productivity low. Meanwhile, Kathmandu's prosperity is bringing problems. In the past decade, while the valley's population has nearly doubled to 1.2 million, housing (and the brick "factories" that make it possible) has been chewing up farmland at a speedy rate - a trend that threatens to accelerate, as ever more hill people flock to the valley for a piece of the action. At the same time, high land prices and the declining quality of life in the capital are only adding to the pressure on farmland. Those who can are fleeing the inner city, just as they have every other city in the world, and are rapidly creating a suburban commuter culture. In the absence of any greenbelt regulations, valley farmers and guthi (temple trusts) are steadily selling out, as their valuable farmland becomes even more valuable as real estate.
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