Section 3 (Crop Management)

Soil fertility in the hills of Nepal
significantly less than the rate of adoption of fertilizer. These results are somewhat surprising given the
relatively higher cost of fertilizer compared to seed and the additional difficulty of transporting bulky
fertilizer.
The logit model used to determine factors affecting the adoption of fertilizer was significant at 1%
level of significance based on likelihood ratio (Table 3). Goodness of fit, which is generally measured by
Pseudo R2 in such model, was 0.43. The result shows that the farmers in Dolakha (eastern hills) have
high probability of using fertilizer than in Dailekh (western hills). The other variables that contribute in
the adoption of fertilizer are access to the market, literacy of head of the household, number of years one
is cultivating improved OPVs, number of economically active (labor force) members in the household
and size of Khet land (rice field). Number of livestock holding (availability of manure) has negative
impact on adoption of fertilizer as manure is a good substitute of fertilizer in the hills. Income from sales
of crops and contact with extension people contribute adoption of fertilizer positively but the coefficients
associated with those variables failed to be significant (Table 3). Hiring of labor for maize was not a
significant determinant of fertilizer adoption suggesting that having sufficient resources to hire labor does
not necessarily mean that those resources would also be used to purchase fertilizer.
In terms of marginal effects on the adoption of fertilizer district has largest positive effect followed by
nearness of market, area of khet land and literacy of head of household. These factors, except Khet area,
are associated with the general development of an area. The construction of roads for example (Dolakha
has a more extensive road system than Dailekh in this study) would obviously have a significant impact
on the nearness of markets and in many cases the availability of schools and teachers.
The number of laborers available per household and experience in cultivation of improved maize are
the other variables that positively influence the adoption of fertilizer. These two variables have equal
marginal effect on probability of adoption.
Conclusion
Farmers in Nepal still rely heavily on traditional techniques for cultivating maize. Fertilizer use is
becoming important in areas that have an infrastructure to support its delivery. Support for infrastructure
development, particularly roads would have a positive effect on the utilization of fertilizers as would
support for education. Aside these factors, over which the traditional agricultural research and delivery
systems have little or no control, the it appears that improving the delivery of information on production
practices of maize (varieties as well as fertilizer practices) could have a significant impact on the
expansion of the use of fertilizer as well as improved varieties. Including a fertilizer component to the
expanding varietal testing and demonstration program of the Hill Maize Research project in Nepal could
likely have a big impact on the use of fertilizers within the area where the work is being conducted.
Literature Cited
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Paudyal, K.R. and Poudel, S.K. (2001). Impact of public- and private-sector maize research in Nepal. In:
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