Despite more than a decade of intensive urbanization, Nepal remains heavily dependent on agriculture for domestic food security, rural livelihoods, and for the generation of employment opportunities in aligned service industries.  At the same time, agricultural productivity remains, by many metrics, the lowest in the South Asia region.  Development of the agri-food sector has benefited from a sustained period of relative political stability following the resolution of the Maoist insurgency in 2007.  Nevertheless, the recent devolution of powers to the newly formed provinces following the adoption of the Constitution of 2015 has created a host of new coordination and administrative challenges.  Furthermore, sustainable agricultural development in Nepal faces long-standing structural, technical and institutional barriers to change that are compound by factors such as intensifying climate variability, weak value chains, extreme levels of out-migration, and the lingering impacts of natural disasters such as the severe earthquakes that struck the country in 2015.  In this retrospective presentation, I discuss some of the success and failures that have marked agricultural research and development investments over the last decade and offer insights into how new programming can be more effectively prioritized, targeted, and implement across the diverse agricultural landscapes of Nepal.

Andrew McDonald is Associate Professor in the Soil and Crop Sciences Section of the School of Integrative Plant Science at Cornell University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Global Development. He is a cropping systems ecologist who addresses global challenges to agricultural sustainability and food security through process-based agronomy, integrated systems analysis, development of decision frameworks, and by fostering innovation alliances to support sustainable rural development. Much of McDonald’s current research program is anchored in South Asia where he previously led CIMMYT’s sustainable intensification program, including the eco-regional Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia.  At Cornell, McDonald is also a faculty fellow at the Tata-Cornell Institute as well as the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability.