MANY SPECIES. ONE PLANET. ONE FUTURE. cg]s k|hflt . ;femf wlt{ . xfd|f] eljio . The Journal of AGRICULTURE AND ENVIRONMENT (This issue is published on the occasion of the World Environment/Population Day-2010) Vol: 11 June 2010 Government of Nepal Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives June 2010 Published by: Government of Nepal Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives Gender Equity and Environment Division Agriculture Environment and Biodiversity Section Singh Durbar, Kathmandu, Nepal Telephone: 00977-1-4211940 Fax: 00977-1-4211839 Web: www.moac.gov.np Email: [email protected] [email protected] (manuscript submission) Views expressed in this publication are of the author(s). They do not necessarily reflect that of the organizations they belong to. Figure 2: Main sources of GHGs from Agriculture - 2005 TABLE OF CONTENTS More Profitable Rice Varieties Crowd Beneficial Landraces out Krishna Prasad Pant Comparison of Farm Production and Marketing Cost and Benefit among Selected Vegetable Pockets in Nepal Deepak Mani Pokhrel Socio-Economic and Environmental Aspects of Farming Practices in the Peri-Urban Hinterlands of Nepal Gopal Datt Bhatta and Werner Doppler Assessing the Impact of Ambient Ozone on Growth and Yield of Crop at Rampur, Chitwan K. Kharel and L. P. Amgain Total Bacterial Counts of Raw Milk in Eastern Terai of Nepal Lekh Raj Dahal, Dainik B. Nepali Karki and Ramashish Shah Climeto-Cylic Immigrations with Declining Population of Wild Honeybee, Apis Dorsata F. in Chitwan Valley, Nepal Suroj Pokhrel Impact of Climate Change on Production and Productivity: a Case Study of Maize Research and Development in Nepal Janak Lal Nayava and Dil Bahadur Gurung Integrated Economic and Environmental Assessment of Nitrogenous Fertilizer Application in Canadian Prairies Suren Kulshreshtha Agricultural Intensification: Linking with Livelihood Improvement and Environmental Degradation in Mid-Hills of Nepal Nani Raut, Bishal Kumar Sitaula and Roshan Man Bajracharya Knowledge, Practice and Use of Pesticides among Commercial Vegetable Growers of Dhading District, Nepal P. Shrestha, P. Koirala and A. S. Tamrakar Selenium Its Role in Livestock Health and Productivity Doj Raj Khanal and Anthony P. Knight Dacvim Role of Food Tradition in Conserving Crop Landraces On-farm Deepak Kumar Rijal Poultry Production, Management and Bio-Security Measures Banshi Sharma Fertilizer Policy Development in Nepal Ram Krishna Shrestha Agricultural Policy Review for Coffee Promotion in Nepal Kul Prasad Tiwari Implementing ABS Regime in Nepal Through Community Based Biodiversity Management Framework Bikash Paudel, Pitambar Shrestha, Bir Bahadur Tamang and Abiskar Subedi MANY SPECIES. ONE PLANET. ONE FUTURE. cg]s k|hflt . ;femf wlt{ . xfd|f] eljio . The Journal of AGRICULTURE AND ENVIRONMENT Patron Nathu Prasad Chaudhary, MSc Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives The Editorial Board Editor-in-Chief: Hari Dahal, PhD Joint Secretary, Gender Equity and Environment Division, MOAC Editor: Krishna Prasad Paudyal, PhD Horticulture Research Division, NARC Editor: Deepak Mani Pokhrel, PhD Gender Equity and Environment Division, MOAC Editor: Shreeram P. Neopane, PhD Local Initiatives for Biodiversity, Research and Development Editor: Megh Raj Bhandari, PhD Central Food Laboratory, DFTQC Editorial Management . Deepak Mani Pokhrel, PhD Bidya Pandey, MSc Government of Nepal Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives June 2010 iii EDITORIAL The World Environment Day (June 5) is peoples' day for environmental action. Under the theme 'Many Species. One Planet. One Future' and as a part of the International year of Biodiversity 2010, this year's event celebrated the incredible diversity of life on this wondrous earth. Rwanda celebrated this year's world Environment Day as a global host country, and organized a vivid celebration focusing on conservation of Gorilla in Volcanoes National Park, Kigali. The day's agenda are to give information about the species and their existence in and extinction from the planet. Millions of species are estimated to inhabit in this marvelous planet; scientists have managed to identify only two millions of them and a huge number of the species is unknown. We don't know whom we have been sharing our life with. The only we do know is the human being whose population is growing, whilst most of other species of flora and fauna becoming fewer and rarer. The day is celebrated through several events and activities such as street rallies, demonstrations, posters, pamphlets, plantation, TV and radio talks, interactions, seminars and relevant environmental campaigns. Gender Equity and Environment Division in the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives has been publishing the Journal of Agriculture and Environment as a regular program to celebrate the World Environment Day. The division now has brought the journal's new issue, vol.11, in the hand of readerships. This volume essentially includes technical as well as review manuscripts on agriculture environment and population interrelationships and also agricultural biodiversity conservation and utilization. Gender Equity and Environment Division is pleased to release new volume of the journal. The division acknowleges the valuable contributions from authors, reviewers, editors and the editorial management team and hopes that the readers find the issue informative. Editor-in-Chief iv The Journal of Agriculture and Environment Vol:11, Jun.2010 Technical Paper MORE PROFITABLE RICE VARIETIES CROWD BENEFICIAL LANDRACES OUT Krishna Prasad Pant, PhD1 ABSTRACT The study compares gross revenues from modern rice varieties and landraces and valuates different useful traits of rice landraces to demonstrate an empirical methodology for biodiversity valuation. A sample of 200 rice growers in hills and plain area was surveyed for commercialization of agro-biodiversity project. For estimating the value put by the consumers on different rice traits a hedonic pricing model was used that disaggregates the prices paid by the consumers for different useful traits of rice. The results show that the consumers value aromatic and tasty traits much higher than other traits. As the farmers are earning much lower income from many landraces as compared to that from modern varieties, the farmers are likely to replace them by the modern varieties. The findings of the study will be helpful to prepare market based strategies for rice biodiversity conservation, particularly for the conservation of rice landraces. Key words: Agrobiodiversity, biodiversity-valuation, hedonic-pricing, rice-landrace, traits BACKGROUND Rice biodiversity is a reservoir of rice genetic resources with allelic variations that have vast potential for future rice breeding. The diversity of food plants consists of crop resources that are created and maintained by the farmers as active components of agroecosystems (Brookfield and Padoch, 1994; Vandermeer et al, 1998). Though the need for the conservation of rice biodiversity is agreed by all, the origin of the conflicts for dealing with this issue stems from the rules of division and appropriation of the benefits out of the commercial utilization of the rice genetic resources. Rice being the most important staple food in South and South East Asia, the conservation of the rice diversity and utilization of the diversity for rice breeding are directly related to the food security of this heavily populated part of the world. Considering the immediate need for addressing food problem, green revolution replacement model of agricultural development is still emphasised whereby landraces are displaced by the so called high yielding and fertilizer responsive modern varieties. As the market supplies high yielding modern varieties of rice, the rational farmers do replace narrow genetic base modern varieties for low productive but rich in other trait landraces they have. A few, genetically uniform, such varieties have replaced genetically variable crop landraces (Brush, 1991; Harlan, 1992). There are many useful traits in landraces that the farmers like. In Nepal, about 53 percent of the farm households continue to grow both modern varieties and landraces simultaneously (Joshi and Bauer, 2006). The farmers generally grow high yielding modern varieties for sales and landraces for family consumption. The farmers having larger size of the rice land demand different high yielding varieties depending on the traits. Their demand for these types is clearly shaped in part as a derived demand from markets, land and soil heterogeneity and in part by the consumption preferences of their families. There is a need to conserve on-farm rice diversity as part of a strategy to conserve crop, rice genetic resources of diverse characteristics. Growing different rice varieties by the farmers to meet different needs is the development approach2 of the biodiversity conservation. This approach values, 1 Senior Agricultural Economist, MOAC, [email protected]. 2 There are other approaches to protect biodiversity, including in-situ conservation through protected area conservation, ex-situ conservation through zoos, aquaria, botanical gardens, seed banks and gene banks. 1 The Journal of Agriculture and Environment Vol:11, Jun.2010 Technical Paper conserves, develops and markets agro-biodiversity to alleviate the extreme poverty (Bardsley and Thomas, 2003). However, measuring the value of biodiversity is a great challenge. Reid et al. (1993) observed that even the debates on the measurement of biodiversity started in the 1950s and