Nepali farmers abandon rice as monsoon shifts

Thomson Reuters Foundation. For most of his adult life, Bidur Basnet has planted paddy rice each monsoon season on his five hectares of mountain land. But in the last five years, as monsoon rains have grown increasingly unreliable, he has had to abandon the country's staple crop. Now he grows easier-to-water vegetables on half his land, leaving the other half fallow. Battered by growing rainfall variability and unpredictable weather, Nepal's rice farmers are looking for alternatives, including new crops. In mountainous Kavrepalanchowk district, about 35 kilometers from Kathmandu, vast tracts of former rice land have now been turned to small-scale vegetable farming. More on www.trust.org Filming/editing: Saleem Shaikh