Poverty, livestock and household typologies in Nepal

Poverty, livestock and household typologies in Nepal

Descripción

Livestock make a substantial contribution to household livelihoods and currently sustain the livelihoods of an estimated 700 million rural poor in developing countries. In Nepal, poverty levels are extremely high and more than 80 percent of the population relies on the agriculture sector for employment and income generation. The aim of the analysis presented in this paper is twofold: firstly to gain an in-depth understanding of the features that characterize the poor in Nepal so as to dete rmine the role livestock plays in and for household income and income sources; secondly, based on the findings, to set up household typologies related to livestock to identify household groups within the country to better target specific livestock policies. Livestock is found to contribute significantly to agriculture income both in the form of home production consumed within the households and agriculture cash income. The cash component proves to be especially important for the more isola ted areas in which access to cash is very limited and for the landless households. This leads to a call for policy makers to ensure that policies targeting livestock are put in place, since this will indirectly help the large portion of the rural poor in Nepal.