Mountain Agriculture

The ecology of IHR and its biodiversity is increasingly facing the brunt of increasing population, urbanization, land degradation, over exploitation and out-migration. This is associated with threats to livelihood, agriculture, and productivity everywhere in the IHR, where agriculture and allied activities continue to be the largest employment sector. The supply chain faces non-transparent, inefficient and non-communicating network, high input cost of non-reliable quality due to less know-how, poor post-harvest storage and management and lack of modern day farming information are some other challenges, which need to be addressed.

Agriculture based livelihood options and developing alternative livelihoods in the mountains spells out unlimited possibilities considering the wealth of natural resources the IHR is endowed with and the tenacious nature of the mountain communities. Taking this into consideration, the following areas have been identified for focus in the next three years:

• Market Linkages
• Skill Development & Social Entrepreneurship
• Food Security
• Agro-Biodiversity
• Community Forestry