TitleMountain Agricultural Products: Opportunities and Challenges

A large proportion of the mountain population relies on climate-dependent sources of livelihoods, such as agriculture, livestock and forestry, and these are increasingly susceptible to climate risks, which potentially trigger outmigration and increase pressure on services in the destinations to which they migrate. Mountains are important centers of agro biodiversity with a great variety of locally adapted crops and livestock, and an important genetic resource and asset for assuring food security for a growing global population. However, mountain agricultural biodiversity is facing increased risk, and the number of crops and crop varieties grown on farms is diminishing. Declining diversity on the land coincides with increasing homogenization of diets. Today, 30 crops supply 95 percent of the calories that people obtain from food and only four crops – maize, rice, wheat and potatoes – supply over 60 percent, according to a report of Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). This unprecedented and growing reliance on an increasingly narrow range of crops, crop varieties and animal breeds bring long-term risks for biodiversity. This situation leaves the food system unnecessarily exposed to shocks and stresses, as well as neglecting a high-impact solution to major health, environmental and food security challenges. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that climate change will reduce agricultural production by 2 percent, while demand will increase by 14 percent every decade until 2050. The narrowing range of crops also undermines the ability of agriculture to adapt to climate change, because many traditional or indigenous local crop varieties and animal breeds are more resilient than the modern ones that have replaced them. Agricultural biodiversity and food security are strongly linked. Traditional cultivars are a source of nutritious food that is often disease resistant and adapted to variable local climatic conditions since they have an incredible amount of genetic diversity. They can also provide characteristics and diversity that can be very useful for the further adaptation to climate change.

Although the great diversity afforded by specific conditions (biodiversity, climate, topography, culture) gives mountain areas a comparative advantage for producing a variety of ‘niche products’, the limited availability of arable land, and the smaller size and more fragmented farms make it difficult for mountain farmers to realize economies of scale. Though these smallholder farmers are the source of more than 80 percent of food consumed in developing countries, they often face challenges in accessing markets and fetching a good price for their produce.

The mountain farmers, unlike farmers from larger farms in the plains of the lowlands who are able to bargain and purchase more competitively, often get less value for their produce due to inadequate access to farm inputs, financial resources, technology, training, research and advisory services, and lack of basic infrastructure such as roads, transport, markets and communication. Considering the mountain context where producers are scattered, most of the produce is supplied in raw form, and a major share of profit margin is accrued at the upper end of the chain with little impact on poverty reduction and food security. On the one hand, there is a need to develop a value chain of mountain products and services, and, on the other hand, enabling and inclusive policy frameworks are required.

Salil Saroj

New Delhi