Nepalis need to change food consumption habit: PM

 Kathmandu, Feb. 4

Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli has said that Nepal needed to increase farming productivity in order to be self-reliant in agriculture.

Addressing the national cadre meeting of All Nepal Peasants’ Federation in the Capital on Thursday, he stated that Nepalis do not have good food consumption habit which had resulted in the growth of import of agricultural products.

“The country needs only 9.4 million tons of food in a year but it produces 10.8 million tons food. It is happening due the discrepancy in our food consumption,” he said while urging the farmers to grow high-value rice to meet the national demand.

Saying that the government was implementing the Prime Minister Agriculture Modernisation Project with the aim to increase the productivity and modernising the sector, PM Oli urged to make the maximum utilisation of the available arable land in order to take the country to the path of self-reliance in food production.

He also noted that the grants mobilised by the government in agriculture sector was being misused and only the clever ones had been obtaining it.

He said that the history of farmers’ movement is about seven decades old and it was an important part of social movements in Nepal. Farmers organisations had been struggling for a long time, there were many farmers’ movements for the rights of tenancy, construction and tearing the contract papers in Terai, he said.

“These movements and activities had contributed in increasing the awareness among the farmers and other sections in the society,” he said.

According to PM oli, every citizen in the country is a farmer in a sense. Teacher, factory worker, student or a leader everyone is involved in farming in either way.

But wrong policy for the sector has damaged the things. We should improve politics to improve other sectors in the society and economy, he said.

He said that the duplicate communists had brought a bad name to the communism, and he had tried to bring the things back on the track but failed to make it so.

Published in The Rising Nepal daily on 5 February 2021.