Haat bazaar of Sanphe Bagar – better market for farmers
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Authors
Narayan Ghimire, Krishna Tiwari
Issue Date
04/04/2017
Type
Language
en
Keywords
Agriculture , Economic Development
Alternative Title
Abstract
In the wee hours of Saturday, women near Sanphe Bagar of Achham District start loading their doko (bamboo baskets) with fresh farm produces. Some pluck tomatoes from their gardens while some pack cauliflowers, cabbages, radishes, onions and many other varieties of vegetables. Some get busy packing spices including ginger, chilies and turmeric. They all get ready for the Sanibare bazaar (Saturday open-air market) in Sanphe Bagar. At 5:00 am, much acclaimed commercial farmer of Nawathana village, Brinda Devi Saud plucks out a huge radish at her backyard. This one weights nearly 7 kgs and she has waited for quite a while to cash it in the haat bazaar. Damayanti Kunwar of Sanphe with her neighbors regularly visits the haat bazaar to sell their vegetables. Likewise, Tanka Mahat of Nawathana, a nearby hamlet is always keen about the haat bazaar to sell her farm products since she does not like to wander around with loads of vegetables on her back looking for the customers. Sanphe Bagar haat bazaar which was incepted in Sanphe Bagar in the year of 2015 with support from POSAN project. POSAN came a long way to change the production and marketing pattern of vegetables and spices motivating poor farmers, introducing new technologies on production and harvesting, providing irrigation and processing facilities, and giving technical trainings on seasonal and off seasonal vegetable production. While the farmers started to grow different vegetables and spices, local market environment did not respond in a conducive way. People residing in the semi-urban pocket of Achham used to consume relatively cheaper and staled vegetable imported from bigger urban centres of the southern plains and India. The business persons were not interested in the local produces because of irregular and insufficient supply; they were obviously reluctant to break their conventional supply chain. They were unlikely to purchase products directly from the bamboo baskets of poor farmers for their bigger business. For them, small growers could only serve small a handful of end consumers directly. In addition to these problems, the producers were not unionised to market their products jointly, and it was even difficult to ensure that fresh vegetable are available daily. To address these problems, a new direct marketing channel tailored for small and poor farmers was much needed. To prevail over, the project did necessary coordination with local governing bodies, political parties and civil society organisations, and after many up and downs the Sanphe Bagar haat bazaar kicked off functioning in the early 2015. This haat bazaar has offered an unprecedented opportunity to 22 poor women farmers to get values of their products by converting about 12 ropani (1 Ropani = 508.83771 m²) under-utilsed land into vegetable and spice farm. It has drawn attention of many as the economic viability has grown much better. The haat bazaar has also contributed to reduce women workload (drudgery) by decreasing time and labour which was used in marketing their products by shouldering vegetable in a bamboo basket in much more painful way, let aside the risks of returning home without sales. Tanka Mahat of Nawathana shares, “Despite having a small production, I am being habitual to enterprise culture. It’s better than roaming around shouldering heavy load of vegetables.” While Mahat is only the representative actors of the system, there are more than 20 other women involved in the haat bazaar. Total turnover of the haat bazaar of last 12 months was above NPR 434,000 (£ 3380). Moreover, the haat bazaar has offered visitors a chance to buy a variety of unique agro-products, link farmers with wholesalers, spice processors and larger grocery firms. The haat bazaar established from scratch gradually tied up with local market in such a way that the demand went up and now it operates twice a week including Tuesday. The haat bazaar management committee manages and operates the system. To ensure its sustainability, the traders support the committee. As Sanphe and its periphery is home to many poor and small holder farmers where market access seemed bleak, the haat bazaar’s intervention has given hopes to the aspiring and emerging commercial farmers. Its success sets a good example about creation of market hub for small holder farmers for better economic viability. In fact, haat bazaar has broken stereotypical market mechanism and linked farmers to better livelihood option encouraging them to increase production for commercialisation of agriculture. There are numerous other pockets like Sanphe in the far west and other parts of the country which have high scope of uplifting people’s livelihood through agricultural yields; if interventions are made to strengthen the market mechanism as per the demand, farmer’s lives can change much better.
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All Rights Reserved
All rights reserved
All rights reserved