Roshan Shrestha

In: UA Magazine 9 - Financing Urban Agriculture

In Nepal there are 58 municipalities and about 80% of the Nepalese population depends on agriculture, which is mainly based in the rural areas. Due to the high urbanisation rate, most of the arable land of Kathmandu inner city is occupied by housing and agricultural production has thus been reduced. More arable land is in the city's outer ring area, where people are involved in agriculture (rice and wheat) and horticulture and processing on a larger scale, the products of which are sold at the local market. The impact of two cooperatives are described here: MPSACCO, a women-only cooperative which has adopted two types of lending methodologies: Individual lending and Peer lending, and SSACCO, which is a mixed membership cooperative, adopted Individual lending only.