As a community agrovet entrepreneur, Kamala helps other dairy producers in the area treat and care for their livestock. Now, with the support of Heifer and her women’s cooperative, she’s launched a mulberry fodder business to take her enterprise one step further.
“We have planted more than 100,000 saplings this year and hope to sell it in greater profits than the previous years,” Kamala said, referring to the thriving mulberry nursery she looks after with her husband. Mulberry is not only an excellent source of nutrition for livestock, but a great and often under-appreciated source of income for smallholder farmers. With a high market demand and short supply, families like Kamala’s have been able to cash in on the opportunity and make significant profits. Kamala and her husband bought each mulberry cutting at Rs 2, or about 2 cents, and can sell each resulting sapling at six times that, after nurturing them for just six months. They are using Heifer’s network of cooperatives to sell across the country, and the local government’s Department of Livestock Services has already purchased more than 22,000 saplings from them. “Farmers are beginning to understand the benefits of nutritious fodder like Jai, Barsim, Napier, Mulato and Mulberry,” Kamala said. A prosperous relationship between a farmer and their livestock is one of shared vitality. Healthy animals require routine care and wholesome feed. And resilient families require productive animals, which yields a direct link to nutrition and income more often than not. And her own livestock—five cows, three heifers and two buffaloes—are doing well providing 70 liters of sellable milk each day. “Previously each buffalo would yield only 1-2 liters of milk [per] day,” she shared, “but with improved practices and nutritious fodder, this has increased to 8 liters [per] day.” The manure from the animals is also rightly utilized as fertilizer for the kitchen garden, producing nutritious vegetables for the family. “Today I have my own shop and a large network of farmers who rely on me for quality veterinary services,” Kamala boasts. Already the multiple income sources from her small homestead dairy and fodder businesses have increased their living standard, and with a Heifer-facilitated loan from a local bank, Machhapuchhre Bank Limited, Kamala has plans to expand both enterprises. What powers Kamala? Bihani Dairy Cooperative was formed after members like Kamala joined hands to unite and pursue agriculture enterprises. They identified various challenges while the major challenge was: a need for storage to prevent spoilage of dairy cow and buffalo milk produced in their community and sell it consistently. With the support of Heifer Nepal, the cooperative worked with the municipality to convert a vegetable collection center into Bihani Dairy. Bihani Dairy cooperative not only collects milk but makes resources like feed, fodder plants, and other inputs available to the farmers. Bihani links up Community agrovet entrepreneurs like Kamala with the whole community where the services are localized and delivered to the needy farmers. Bihani dairy cooperative explores how farmers’ dairy can be commercialized through product diversification, packaging and marketing realizing limitless opportunities for the farmers products. Bihani Dairy invests most of the money it earns back into the community, with the rest reserved for further improvements for the business. The group also used some of its funds to create low-interest loans for struggling farmers. Heifer International believes farmer-centered agricultural value chains, like the dairy chain leveraged by the women of Bihani, are a critical pathway to help vulnerable people provide nutritious food for their families and communities while earning a fair wage for themselves. Heifer works with smallholder farmers through cooperatives by localizing the services that ensure access to inputs, access to animal health services, access to finance, access to markets etc. which is key to empower the smallholders as a major contributor in agriculture-based economy. What does it mean for Nepal? More than half of Nepal’s population makes its living from agriculture, yet most farmers only own an acre of land. All agriculture development priorities are targeted to commercialize agriculture which has resulted in government policies that will only benefit the few numbers of well-off entrepreneurs who qualify. The smallholders hardly benefit from the agriculture development and commercialization plan as they cannot qualify with the prerequisites for efficient systems, consistent supply and mass production. But huge results can be achieved in agriculture development in Nepal where 70 percent of the population is regularly engaged in agriculture if the policies are intended to build efficient production and consistent supply through production by mass. Heifer International Nepal has always believed in smallholder women as the powerhouse for agriculture development leading to economic transformation. Heifer is currently working through 255 cooperatives with 300,000+ smallholder’s families where there are women like Kamala in each family.
